Matching models of different abstraction levels: A refinement equivalence approach

This chapter deals with the reuse of models, which assists in constructing new models on the basis of existing knowledge. Some of the activities that support model reuse, such as model construction, retrieval, and validation, may involve matching models on the basis of semantic and structural similarity. However, matching for the purposes of retrieval and validation relates to models of different abstraction levels, hence structural similarity is difficult to assess. This chapter proposes the concept of refinement equivalence, which means that a detailed model is a refinement of an abstract model. It emphasizes the use of refinement equivalence for the purpose of validating a detailed application model against an abstract domain model in the context of a domain analysis approach called application-based domain modeling (ADOM). We discuss the structural characteristics of refinement operations in object-process methodology (OPM) models, and present an algorithm that detects refinement equivalence.