An Introduction to Graph-Based Modeling Systems, Part II: Graph-Grammars and the Implementation

Attributed graphs are a widely used paradigm for representing management science models. In Part I of the study, we presented an overview of the concept of a Graph-Based Modeling System (GBMS), which supports the construction of a variety of models as long as the models can be expressed as attributed graphs. The key concept underlying the research is graph-grammars, a formal technique to specify how to build graphs with desired properties. Graph-grammars, as shown in Part I, among other capabilities, facilitate the creation of direct manipulation, computer graphics interfaces for graph-based models. A brief overview of a prototype implementation to do so, Networks, was also provided. In this concluding part, the implementation and the core technology underlying the research—graph-grammars—will be presented in detail. INFORMS Journal on Computing, ISSN 1091-9856, was published as ORSA Journal on Computing from 1989 to 1995 under ISSN 0899-1499.