A graph rewriting framework for Statecharts semantics

The purpose of the paper is to show that graph rewriting is a suitable environment to formalize semantics of specification languages with dynamic features. This is exemplified considering Statecharts in a variant allowing dynamic creation of processes. Graph rewriting rules give the semantics of Statecharts in such interpretation. Standard Statecharts semantics can be recovered by suitably restricting derivation sequences that describe behaviours in the dynamic semantics. More abstract semantics, better suited to study equivalences and general properties, can be obtained from graph rewriting semantics.