A Theory for Model-Based Transformation Applied to Computer-Supported Preservation in Digital Archives

Model transformation has applications in many areas as, e.g., in model-driven software development or automated knowledge exchange. When applied, model transformations usually have in common that the transformation process shall preserve certain properties. In model-driven software development, e.g., abstract models are transformed into more specific ones while preserving the behavior of the specified software system. In this paper, we present a model transformation approach that implements a preservation-centric view. We introduce a formal preservation language that allows transformation algorithms to be computed automatically. Additionally, these generated transformations can be proven to respect specified preservation requirements. We demonstrate our approach using a systems specification example that stems from the digital archiving world. We specify a Web-archiving system that consists of two components each of which uses its own Website model for storage. Internal processes necessitate exchanging Websites between these two components and, thus, model transformation. We apply our preservation language and show how the algorithm generation procedure generates a transformation algorithm that guarantees an unchanged external view on the transformed Websites