Solving the TTC 2014 Movie Database Case with GrGen.NET

The task of the Movie Database Case [2] is to identify all couples of actors who performed together in at least three movies. The challenge of the task is to do this fast on a large database. We employ the general purpose graph rewrite system GRGEN.NET in developing and optimizing a solution. 1 What is GrGen.NET? GRGEN.NET (www.grgen.net) is a programming language and development tool for graph structured data with pattern matching and rewriting at its core, which furthermore supports imperative and object-oriented programming, and features some traits of database-like query-result processing. Founded on a rich data modeling language with multiple inheritance on node and edge types, it offers pattern-based rewrite rules of very high expressiveness, with subpatterns and nested alternative, iterated, negative, and independent patterns, as well as preset input parameters and output def variables yielded to. The rules are orchestrated with a concise control language, which offers constructs that are simplifying backtracking searches and state space enumerations. Development is supported by graphical and stepwise debugging, as well as search plan explanation and profiling instrumentation for graph search steps – the former helps in first getting the programs correct, the latter in getting them fast thereafter. The tool was built for performance and scalability: it