Specifying Refinement Relations in Vertical Model Transformations

In typical model-driven development processes, models on different abstraction levels are used to describe different aspects. When developing a mechatronic system, an abstract system model is used to describe everything that is relevant to more than one of the disciplines involved in the development. The discipline-specific implementation is then carried out using different concrete discipline-specific models. During the development, changes in these discipline-specific models may affect the abstract system model and other disciplines' models. Thus, these changes must be propagated to ensure the overall consistency. Bidirectional model transformation and synchronization techniques aim at automatically resolving such inconsistencies. However, most changes are discipline-specific refinements that do not affect other disciplines. Therefore, vertical model transformations also have to take into account that these refinements must not be propagated. Current model transformation techniques, however, do not provide sufficient means to specify and detect whether a change is just a refinement. In this paper, we propose a way to formally define such refinements. These definitions are then used by the model transformation engine to automatically synchronize models of different abstraction levels.