Describing Policies with Graph Constraints and Rules

Policies are used to control the behavior of complex systems. In order to support reasoning about the behavior, it is necessary to have a precise specification of the policy, better if described in an intuitive visual formalism. Graphical constraints and graph transformation rules provide such a combination of a natural yet semantically sound formalization. Furthermore, the evolution of policies, the combination of policies and the stepwise development of policies can be given a solid foundation and their analysis and verification can benefit from the use of existing general graph transformation engines