Preface: Volume 44, Issue 4

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Abstract

This volume contains the contributions of the workshop Uniform Approaches to Graphical Process Specification Techniques (UNIGRA'01) held in Genova (31.3. – 1.4.2001) as a satellite of ETAPS 2001. The main idea of this workshop has been to bring together various unifying approaches from the areas of graph transformations, visual modeling techniques and Petri nets due to the increasing amount of divergent formalisms in each of these areas.

According to this main idea, this volume presents uniform approaches and further introduces unifying and comparative studies between these fields and related areas.

The first part contains contributions from the area of graph transformation with new aspects of GRACE by Kreowski et al. and high-level replacement systems by Parisi-Presicce as unifying approaches to graph transformations and related specification techniques. The main ideas concerning the common exchange formats for graphs and graph transformations discussed within the APPLIGRAPH project and a dynamic meta model for graph transformation approaches are presented in the papers by Taentzer and Heckel, Zündorf respectively. Related work can be found in the handbooks of graph grammars and computing by graph transformation as well as in the proceedings of GRATRA 2000, a satellite of ETAPS 2000.

In the second part concerning visual modeling techniques, new aspects of the visual language environments GenGEd and DIAGEN are discussed by Ermel et.al. as well as Minas and Hoffmann respectively. Formal concepts improving different aspects of the UML are studied in three contributions by Groβe-Rhode, Schürr as well as Baresi and Pezze respectively. Related work has been presented at GT-VMT'00, a satellite of ICALP'00 in Geneve and will be presented at GT-VMT'01 as a satellite of ICALP'01 at Heraklion.

In the third part, three unifying approaches for Petri nets are proposed by Dehnert et al., Meseguer et al. and by Juhás et al. The first contribution presents the second installment of the “Petri Net Baukasten” developed within the DFG research group “Petri Net Technology”. The first installment has been introduced already at the PNT-Colloquium 1999 in Berlin. A unified presentation of low- and high-level Petri nets is given by Meseguer using their famous unifying framework of rewriting logic. A unified approach for different types of firing rules of Petri nets is given in the paper of Juhás et al. based on partial algebras. A more detailed collection of unifying approaches to Petri Nets is going to appear in a new volume of the series Advances in Petri Net, edited by Ehrig, Juhás, Padberg and Rozenberg.

The workshop has stimulated lively discussions between the 35 participants and will certainly lead to further fruitful cooperations.

The following program committee of UNIGRA'01 has given valuable scientific support before and during the workshop:

Roswitha Bardohl (TU Berlin)

Hartmut Ehrig (TU Berlin) [co-chair]

Gregor Engels (University of Paderborn)

Gabriel Juhas (University of Bratislava/KU Eichstätt)

Hans-Järg Kreowski (University of Bremen)

Ugo Montanari (University of Pisa)

Fernando Orejas (University of Catalunya, Barcelona)

Julia Padberg (TU Berlin) [co-chair]

Francesco Parisi-Presicce (University La Sapienza, Rome)

Grzegorz Rozenberg (University of Leiden)

The next UNIGRA workshop is planned as satellite of ETAPS 2003 in Warsaw.

This volume will be published as volume 44.4 in the series Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS). This series is published electronically through the facilities of Elsevier Science B.V. and its auspices. The volumes in the ENTCS series can be accessed at the URL http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/entcs

The editors of this volume are most grateful to the organizers of ETAPS'01 and the publisher of ENTCS for their valuable support.

Berlin and Genova, May 2001

  • Hartmut Ehrig

  • Claudia Ermel

  • Julia Padberg

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