Describing Systems of Processes by Means of High-level Replacement

Graphs and graph transformations are natural means to describe systems of processes. Graphs represent structure of the system, and graph rewriting rules model dynamic behaviour. In this chapter, we illustrate the technique by describing Petri nets, statecharts, parallel logic programming, and systems of processes. Whereas description of Petri nets is based on usual graphs, statecharts lead us to hierarchical graphs, and parallel logic programming needs jungles. Finally, we combine different approaches to describe systems of processes. Topological structure is represented by a hypergraph. Local states and communication channels correspond to nodes that are labelled with parts of a global jungle playing the role of a shared data structure. The formal model takes advantage of comma-category approach allowing to change both the structure of graph and the contents of nodes consistently and to treat different graph structures as well as different labelling mechanisms in a uniform way.