Towards Common Exchange Formats for Graphs and Graph Transformation Systems

Abstract

The development of common exchange formats for graphs and graph transformation systems is an ongoing initiative within the EU Working Group APPLIGRAPH (Applications of Graph Transformation). The author is reporting on the current state of this format discussion. The formats are based on the extensible markup language XML developed to interchange documents of arbitrary types. Graphs are basic structures in various areas of computer science. A common format for graphs supports the interaction of software developers building tools wrt. graph layout, graph algorithms, graph transformation, reengineering, etc. Moreover, within the graph transformation community tool builders can even gain from a common exchange format for graph transformation systems.