In: Applied Categorical Structures, Vol. 7, No. 4, pages 371-403. December 1999.
Abstract: Based on the well-known theory of high-level replacement systems - a categorical formulation of graph grammars - we present new results concerning refinement of high-level replacement systems. Motivated by Petri nets, where refinement is often given by morphisms, we give a categorical notion of refinement. This concept is called Q-transformations and is established within the framework of high-level replacement systems. The main idea is to supply rules with an additional morphism, which belongs to a specific class Q of morphisms. This leads to the new notions of Q-rules and Q-transformations. Moreover, several concepts and results of high-level replacement systems are extended to Q-transformations. These are sequential and parallel transformations, union, and fusion, based on different colimit constructions. The main results concern the compatibility of these constructions with Q-transformations that is the corresponding theorems for usual transformations are extended to Q-transformations. Finally, we demonstrate the application of these techniques for the special case of Petri nets to a case study concerning the requirements engineering of a medical information system.
Keywords: high-level replacement systems, graph transformations, Petri net transformations, horizontal structuring, refinement.