Model-driven design, refinement and transformation of abstract interactions

In a model-driven design process the interaction between application parts can be described at various levels of platform-independence. At the lowest level of platform-independence, interaction is realized by interaction mechanisms provided by specific middleware platforms. At higher levels of platform-independence, interaction must be described in such a way that it can be further refined and realized onto a number of different middleware platforms, each with its particular interaction mechanisms and implementation constraints. In this paper, we investigate concepts that support interaction design at various levels of middleware-platform-independence. In addition, we propose design operations for interaction refinement. The application of these operations to source designs results in target designs that take into account implementation constraints imposed by platforms, while preserving characteristics prescribed in source designs. Target designs are related to source designs by conformance. We discuss how transformation and conformance can be related, such that transformations indeed preserve the characteristics prescribed by a source design.