Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniques

In order to provide semantic support for visual modeling techniques, new techniques have to be developed which help us to narrow the conceptual gap between graph-based visual modeling techniques like the UML and established methodologies of programming language semantics almost exclusively based on trees and terms. Concepts and results from the area of graph transformation can be used both as a basis for high-level rule-based visual languages, and as semantic domain for visual modeling techniques focusing on the structural and behavioral aspects of today's software systems. Moreover, graph transformation can provide the necessary technology in order to develop the graph-based counterparts of the denotational, operational, or algebraic semantics paradigms in the field of programming languages. In this paper, we substantiate these claims by examples of the use of graph transformation as visual modeling notion, semantic domain, and for the semantics of diagram languages.