Analysing and Transforming Graph Structures: The Graph Transformation Framework

Abstract

Interconnected data or, in particular, graph structures are a valuable source of information. Gaining insights and knowledge from graph structures is applied throughout a wide range of application areas, for which efficient tools are desired. In this work we present an open source Java graph transformation framework. The framework provides a simple fluent Application Programming Interface (API) to transform a provided graph structure to a desired target format and, in turn, allow further analysis. First, we provide an overview on the architecture of the framework and its core components. Second, we provide an illustrative example which shows how to use the framework’s core API for transforming and verifying graph structures. Next to that, we present an instantiation of the framework in the context of analyzing the third-party dependencies amongst open source libraries on the Android platform. The example scenario provides insights on a typical scenario in which the graph transformation framework is applied to efficiently process complex graph structures. The framework is open-source and actively developed, and we further provide information on how to obtain it from its official GitHub page.