Integrating the Specification Techniques of Graph Transformation and Temporal Logic

1 I n t r o d u c t i o n The theory of graph transformation basically studies a variety of formalisms which extend the theory of formal languages in order to deal with structures more general than strings, like graphs and maps. A graph t ransformation system allows one to describe finitely a (possibly infinite) collection of graphs, i.e., those which can be obtained f rom a s tar t graph through repeated applications of graph productions. Each production can be applied to a graph by replacing an occurrence of its left-hand side with its right-hand side. The form of graph productions and the mechanisms stating how a production can be applied to a graph and what the resulting graph is, depend on the specific formalism. In this paper we use the "algebraic, Double Pushout (DPO) approach" [1,2]. The classical theory of the DPO approach is mainly concerned with structural properties and the sequential and parallel composition of t ransformat ion * Research partially supported by the German Research Council (DFG) and the TMR network GETRATS ** A. Corradini is on leave from Dipartimento di Informatica, Pisa. He is also supported by the EC Fixed Contribution Contract n. EBRFMBICT960840