Theory and Application of Graph Transformations

Book excerpt: Theareaofgraphtransformationoriginatedinthelate1960sunderthename “graph grammars” – the main motivation came from practical considerations concerning pattern recognition and compiler construction. Since then, the list of areas which have interacted with the development of graph transformation has grown impressively. The areas include: software speci?cation and development, VLSI layout schemes, database design, modeling of concurrent systems, m- sively parallel computer architectures, logic programming, computer animation, developmentalbiology,musiccomposition,distributedsystems,speci?cationl- guages, software and web engineering, and visual languages. As a matter of fact, graph transformation is now accepted as a fundamental computation paradigm where computation includes speci?cation, programming, and implementation. Over the last three decades the area of graph transfor- tion has developed at a steady pace into a theoretically attractive research ?eld, important for applications. Thisvolume consistsofpapersselectedfromcontributionsto the Sixth Int- national Workshop on Theory and Applications of Graph Transformation that took place in Paderborn, Germany, November 16-20, 1998. The papers und- went an additional refereeing process which yielded 33 papers presented here (out of 55 papers presented at the workshop). This collection of papers provides a very broad snapshot of the state of the art of the whole ?eld today. They are grouped into nine sections representing most active research areas. Theworkshopwasthe sixth in a seriesof internationalworkshopswhich take place every four years. Previous workshops were called “Graph Grammars and Their Application to Computer Science”. The new name of the Sixth Workshop re?ectsmoreaccuratelythecurrentsituation,whereboththeoryandapplication play an equally central role.