One of the main objectives of topological data analysis is the study of discrete invariants for persistence modules, in particular when dealing with multiparameter persistence modules. In many cases, the invariants studied for these non-totally ordered posets P can be obtained from restricting a given module to a subposet X of P that is totally ordered (or more generally, of finite representation type), and then computing the barcode (or the general direct sum decomposition) over X .

We consider in this paper general order-preserving embeddings of representation-finite subposets X into P and study systematically the invariants obtained by decomposing the restriction of a given P-module M to X into its indecompsable summands. The restriction functor from mod P to mod X is well-studied, and it is known to be exact and admits both left and right adjoint functors, known as induction and co-induction functors. This allows us to obtain new homological insights, and also to re-interpret previous results. We use this approach also to determine bases, thus generalizing the concept of signed barcodes which is considered in the literature in relation to stability results.

It turns out that considering only order-embeddings of one fixed poset X into the poset P, and studying the set of all indecomposables obtained from X introduces a lot of redundancy. We therefore also study iterated embeddings of several posets of increasing sizes, while limiting attention to only some indecomposables (that have not been obtained from embedding of smaller posets previously).