Automated semantic analysis of design models

Abstract

Based on several years of experience in generating code from large SDL and UML models in the telecommunications domain, it has become apparent that model analysis must be used to augment more traditional validation and testing techniques. While model correctness is extremely important, the difficulty of use and non-scalability of most formal verification techniques when applied to large-scale design models renders them insufficient for most applications. We have also repeatedly seen that even the most complete test coverage fails to find many problems. In contrast, sophisticated model analysis techniques can be applied without human interaction to large-scale models. A discussion of the model analysis techniques and the model defects that they can detect is provided, along with some real-world examples of defects that have been caught. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.