Checking the Correctness of Architectural Transformation Steps via Proof-Carrying Architectures

Architectural definition often begins with a very highlevel architectural description, e.g., specification of dataflow among a few abstract components. This highlevel description is then refined in order to ultimately achieve a much more detailed description that can be implemented directly. On the other hand, with the advent of the object-oriented paradigm, architectural definition can consist of assembling a collection of standard components and connectors. But, if such an assemblage is complex, it is desirable to generate more abstract descriptions from it, in order to facilitate understanding and analysis. In either case, the end product of the architecting process is an architectural hierarchy, a collection of architectural descriptions linked by mappings that interpret the more abstract descriptions in the more concrete descriptions. Formalized transformational approaches to architecture refinement and abstraction have been proposed. One argument in favor of formalization is that..