Generic modelling with graph rewriting systems [Elektronische Ressource] : paramateric polymorphism and object-oriented modelling with Progress / vorgelegt von Manfred Münch

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• Publié par: rheinisch-westfalischen_technischen_hochschule_-rwth-_aachen
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 34
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Generic Modelling with
Graph Rewriting Systems
Von der Fakultät für Mathematik, Informatik und Naturwissenschaften der
Rheinisch-Westfälischen Technischen Hochschule Aachen zur Erlangung des
akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Naturwissenschaften genehmigte
Dissertation
vorgelegt von
Diplom-Informatiker
Manfred Münch
aus Wachtberg
Berichter: Universitätsprofessor Dr.-Ing. M. Nagl
Univ Dr. rer. nat. A. Schürr
Tag der mündlichen Prüfung:
15. November 2002
Diese Dissertation ist auf den Internetseiten der Hochschulbibliothek online
verfügbar.Curriculum Vitae
Personal Details:
Name: Manfred Münch
Address: Hanfu Ya Yuan Jie No. 4
Haitang Building 7B
Nanjing, 213300
P.R. China
Telephone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Date of birth: February 7, 1971
Place of birth: Bonn, Germany
Nationality: German
Marital status: single
Education:
1977 – 1981 Gemeinschaftsgrundschule Wachtberg, Germany
1981 – 1990 Gymnasium Aloisiuskolleg, Bonn, Germany
1990 Abitur, mark: 1.8
1990 – 1991 Compulsory Military Service at German Airforce,
awarded with an honorary medal “Ehrenmedaille der
Bundeswehr”
Oct 1991 – Apr 1997 Studies of Computer Science at Aachen University of
Technology, Germany
Apr 1995 – Aug 1995 Studies of Computer Science at University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Apr 1997 Diploma in Computer Science, mark: “sehr gut”
Aug 1997 – June 1998 Researcher at University of Southampton, UK
Jul 1998 – Jul 2002 Scientific Employee at Department of Computer Science
III, Aachen University of Technology, Germany
Since Mar 2003 Head of Development, Diehl Controls (Nanjing) Co. Ltd.,
Nanjing, P.R. China
(Manfred Münch)Manfred Münch
Generic Modelling with
Graph Rewriting Systems
Parametric Polymorphism and Object-Oriented Modelling with PROGRESAcknowledgements
This thesis deals with generic modelling with graph rewriting systems and is based on
many research activities at the Department of Computer Science III at Aachen Univer-
sity of Technology as well as cooperating partners. I want to thank Prof. Dr.-Ing. Man-
fred Nagl very much for giving me the opportunity to work in a professional environ-
ment and the discussions about the underlying concepts of this work.
My very special thanks go to Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Andy Schürr who has supported me
during all phases of this thesis. Without his unparalleled help many ideas, concepts,
and implementation issues would not have come into reality. Also, his patience in
proof-reading this thesis deserves my gratitude.
When speaking about implementation issues, I can never thank Marita Breuer enough
for her support. Her advice on how to trick PROGRES’ analyses never failed to
impress. Also, her help in realising the Java code generator must be complemented.
My comprehension of theoretical computer science and typing systems were mainly
trained by Prof. Dr. Pieter Hartel from University of Twente, The Netherlands.
Because of his help I was not scared of reading all the papers on typing systems
any longer. Also, due to his efforts I was given the great opportunity to study at
the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and also to work at the University
of Southampton, UK. Thank you very much, Pieter!
The PROGRES research team deserves my praise and my gratefulness. The very
pleasant ambience gave the motivation to deal with the most difficult problems. My
thanks go to Alexander Königs, Thomas Lettow, Dirk Hesse, and Ralf Welter for their
effort to help improving PROGRES. Kudos to Alexander for making our office a
better place.
Not only helpful system administrators but also very good friends: André Marburger
and Boris Böhlen. Thank you for your advice and expertise on “how to keep calm
although using Linux”, for the fruitful discussions on modelling issues, and for proof-
reading several chapters of this thesis. I also want to thank you for giving an “exile
researcher” a place to hang around after lunch. I value very much that there was always
a chair for me in your office.
iiiAnother very nice place to be was our secretaries’ office. Angelika, Monika, and
Klaudia had to listen to my complaints all the time — but afterwards I felt so much
better...
My parents deserve my gratitude for making my studies possible, especially during
my time in England. The support of my activities remains unforgotten.
Finally, I want to thank my girl-friend Jiang Ying. Her motivation, encouragement,
and constant support during the last years helped me considerably to sustain the bad
times and enjoy the good times in life. Thank you.
Aachen, July 2002 Manfred MünchAbstract
One of the main goals of the software engineering discipline is the provision of ap-
propriate tools for the construction of complex and interactive software systems. A
large number of tools, languages, and methods exist to cope with the problems of
administering the documents, information, and processes of creating large software
systems. Specification languages and methods have been developed to describe formal
aspects of these complex and interactive systems.
At the Department of Computer Science III at Aachen University of Technology,
the specification language PROGRES (PROgrammed Graph REwriting System) has
been developed in the context of the IPSEN (Interactive/Integrated/Incremental Project
Support ENvironment) research project. With PROGRES it is possible to formally
describe complex graph-based structures and operations on these structures. Further-
more, it is possible to generate rapid prototypes of the specified software systems as
stand-alone applications.
In this thesis we have used the PROGRES specification system together with the
rapid prototyping framework to build tools for editing, analysing, and interpreting
visual languages. During a collaborative research with the Department for Process
Control Engineering we have built such tools for an IEC-61131/3 compliant language
which is widely used in the automation and process control industry. We have detected
shortcomings of the PROGRES language for the specification of such large systems.
The identified problems of the PROGRES language are mainly dealing with reusabil-
ity of specified code. Many modern programming languages offer genericity for mod-
elling reusable software units, often together with an object-oriented programming
methodology which also gives users support in an easy adaption of real-world prob-
lems to formal models. In this thesis we have examined those programming and mod-
elling languages and improved the PROGRES language by corresponding concepts.
As being a statically typed specification language, PROGRES already has an elaborate
two-level typing system. We have extended this typing system to allow for generic
modelling of specification units.
vThe PROGRES graph model revealed another drawback for the specification of visual
language systems during our research. It was only possible to specify the structure of
a software system as an attributed graph and (graph) transformations on this structure.
However, we were not able to define any behaviour of graph elements (nodes). Since
a graph-based modelling approach already suggests an object-oriented specification
methodology, the lack of transformation methods as part of graph elements became an
obstacle for the specification of an extendible and generic visual language program-
ming environment. Therefore, we have changed the graph model which PROGRES
is based upon such that it is possible to assign a behaviour to graph elements. Further-
more, the effects of these changes on the rapid prototyping framework are discussed.
The PROGRES language and environment is very often used for rapid prototyping
purposes. A very elaborate and flexible rapid prototyping environment UPGRADE
was being developed at the Department of Computer Science III. In many collabora-
tive research projects, as e. g. the IMPROVE project, we work with PROGRES and
UPGRADE. Therefore, it was an important issue to ensure platform independence
of the specified software systems. This is the reason why the prototype environment
has been implemented in Java. In this thesis we describe the tighter integration of
PROGRES specifications and the prototyping environment by the generation of Java
code from a specification. The final step for gaining a complete platform indepen-
dence is the adaptation of the underlying database system on which PROGRES and
UPGRADE are based. This is out of scope of this thesis, though.