Behavior-Preserving Refinement Relations between Dynamic Software Architectures

In this paper, we address the refinement of abstract architectural models into more platform-specific representations. For each level of abstraction, we employ an architectural style covering structural restrictions on component configurations as well as supported communication and reconfiguration operations. Architectural styles are formalized as graph transformation systems with graph transformation rules defining the available operations. Architectural models are given as graphs to which one can directly apply the transformation rules in order to simulate operations and their effects. In addition to previous work, we include process descriptions into our architectural models in order to control the communication and reconfiguration behavior of the components. The execution semantics of these processes is also covered by graph transformation systems. We propose a notion of refinement which requires the preservation of both structure and behavior at the lower level of abstraction. Based on formal refinement relationships between abstract and platform-specific styles, we can use model checking techniques to verify that abstract scenarios can also be realized in the platform-specific architecture.