Section: Application Domains

Theoretical Computer Science – Formal methods / Graph rewriting systems

Participants : Daniel Archambault, Hélène Kirchner, Guy Melançon, Bruno Pinaud.

Designing visualization techniques and tools to explore dynamic graphs holds a central place in our research agenda. Early this year, we had the opportunity to start a collaboration with experts on graph rewriting systems.

That is, the challenge here is to be able to visually support the exploration and analysis of graphs whose topologies evolve in time according to rewriting rules. Our goal ultimately is to develop a system allowing to visualize the graphs as they evolve, and also offer a complete environment to study the rewriting system in itself. In such a setting, the visualization supports the study of the rewriting system, helping the identification of properties such as its convergence or non-convergence, deadlock situations, frequent or rare instances, etc. On top of all visualization issues it raises, the system also looks at pattern matching and computing history issues. We also look at issues related to the internal representation of the system required for its visualization.