A Closed-loop Model-based Design Approach based on Automatic Verification and Transformation

Domain-specific modeling languages effectively constrain structural concepts, but constraints that are not easily captured with structural constraints are still important to fix at design time. In practice these kinds of constraints are implicitly left to be carried out by the domain modelers. This paper explores the process of incorporating system behavioral (not just structural) constraints into a DSML, and studies the way of generating feasible transformation solutions if those constraints fail, based on a transformation library constructed in advance. Our approach is to carry out the verification process through code generation, but utilize the results of verification as an input to a model transformation generator. The output transformation then operates on the original model. As a case study, we applied the approach to finite state machine (FSM) models that control a cyber-physical system.