XIG translates graph schemas defined in the form of UML class diagrams into the internal GXL graph schema format supported by GXL. GCF, on the other hand, is a framework which simplifies the development of GXL export and import tools, i.e. the development of translators from other formats to GXL and vice versa.

GXL (Graph eXchange Language) itself is designed to be a standard exchange format for graphs. GXL is an XML sublanguage and the syntax is given by a XML DTD (Document Type Definition). This exchange format offers an adaptable and flexible means to support interoperability between graph-based tools (cf. http://www.gupro.de/GXL/).
In particular, GXL was developed to enable interoperability between software reengineering tools and components, such as code extractors
(parsers), analyzers and visualizers. GXL allows software reengineers to combine single-purpose tools especially for parsing, source code extraction, architecture recovery, data flow analysis, pointer analysis, program slicing, query techniques, source code visualization, object recovery, restructuring, refactoring, remodularization etc. into a single powerful reengineering workbench.
There are two innovative features in GXL that make it well-suited to an exchange format for software data. One, the conceptual data model is a typed, attributed, directed graph. This is not to say that all software data ought to be manipulated as graphs, but rather that they can be exchanged as graphs. Two, it can be used to rep