Tool support for detecting defects in object-oriented models

Object-oriented models are commonly used in software projects. They may be affected, however, by various defects introduced easily due to e.g. wrong understanding of modelled reality, making wrong assumptions or editorial mistakes. The defects should be identified and corrected as early as possible, preferably before the model is used as the basis for the subsequent representations of the system. To assure the effectiveness of the defect detection process we need both, better analysis methods and effective tool support. The paper introduces a new analytical method called UML-HAZOP and presents a tool supporting the application of this method.