Hierarchical graph rewriting as a unifying tool for analyzing and understanding nondeterministic systems

Abstract

We have designed and implemented LMNtal (pronounced "elemental"), a language based on hierarchical graph rewriting that allows us to encode diverse computational models involving concurrency, mobility and multiset rewriting. Towards its novel applications, the system has recently evolved into a model checker that employs LMNtal as the modeling language and PLTL as the specification language. The strengths of our LMNtal model checker are its powerful data structure, highly nondeterministic computation it can express, and virtually no discrepancy between programming and modeling languages. Models expressed in Promela, MSR, and Coloured Petri Nets can be easily encoded into LMNtal. The visualizer of the LMNtal IDE turned out to be extremely useful in understanding models by state space browsing. The LMNtal IDE has been used to run and visualize diverse examples taken from the fields of model checking, concurrency and AI search. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.