On the Interleaving Sematics of Transformation Units - A Step into GRACE

The aim of the paper is to introduce the notion of a transformation unit together with its interleaving semantics and to study it as a means of constructing large graph transformation systems from small ones in a structured and systematic way. A transformation unit comprises a set of rules, descriptions of initial and terminal graphs, and a control condition. Moreover, it may import other transformation units for structuring purposes. Its semantics is a binary relation between initial and terminal graphs which is given by interleaving sequences. As a generalization of ordinary derivations, an interleaving sequence consists of direct derivation steps interleaved with calls of imported transformation units. It must obey the control condition and may be seen as a kind of structured derivation. The introduced framework is independent of a particular graph transformation approach and, therefore, it may enhance the usefulness of graph transformations in many contexts.