Using programmed graph rewriting for the formal specification of a configuration management system

Due to increasing complexity of hardware and software systems, configuration management has been receiving more and more attention in nearly all engineering domains (e.g. electrical, mechanical, and software engineering). This observation has driven us to develop a configuration management model (called CoMa) for managing systems of engineering design documents. The CoMa model integrates composition hierarchies, dependencies, and versions into a coherent framework based on a sparse set of essential configuration management concepts. In order to give a clear and comprehensible specification, the CoMa model is defined in a high-level, multi-paradigm specification language (PROGRES) which combines concepts from various disciplines (database systems, knowledge-based systems, graph rewriting systems, programming languages).