Towards constraint-based preservation in systems specification

Model transformation has applications in many areas and usually is to preserve certain properties. In model-driven software development, e.g., abstract models are transformed into more specific ones while preserving the behavior of the overall specified system. In this paper we demonstrate how constraint-based preservation, which we have initially developed in the context of digital archiving, can be applied to systems specification. We demonstrate how our approach helps to preserve communication flows inside a component-based system. In particular, formal preservation constraints allow us to prove invariance of certain significant properties of a component interaction specification if the transformation process adheres to a given set of such constraints.