A case study in specification defects detection using statecharts

There are two types of software defects: (1)implementation defects(i.e., discrepancies between a implementation and its specification), and (2)specification defects(Systems implemented correctly may also fail due to its defective specification design). This paper presents a specification defects detection method called Specification Defects Detection Using Statecharts (SDDS), and applies it to 5 classes from open source software. SDDS converts source codes to statecharts and then find intrinsic design defects or risks of specifications from their statecharts. We applied this method in our case study and proved that at least 3 types of specification defects exist and can be detected by SDDS.