TITLE: Why isn't the use category theory for graph transformation more prominent?
QUESTION [8 upvotes]: On the surface, it would seem that category theory would be a very natural and useful mathematical tool to address the subject of graph transformation. Yet, early indications from online searches seem to indicate that it hasn't received much use in practice. The most cited work seems to point to Minas and Schneider in "Graph Transformation by Computational Category Theory".
This leads me to wonder why the "natural" semantics of morphisms in category theory and the $Grph$ category are not exploited more broadly for this purpose. After briefly surveying  Minas and Schneirder's paper, I did not see it as a powerful and concise tool for graph transforms. The use of boolean matrix algebra seems nearly as powerful, more concise, and highly efficient computationally.
I'm curious to know if the utility of category theory for this purpose is known to be weak, since I was interested in possibly using it as a foundation for some work. I'm interested in learning your insight and/or experience on this topic.

REPLY [3 votes]: Two categories can be equivalent and still the underlying graphs can be very different. In fact, one graph may be infinite and the other finite. The tools developed in category theory aim not to distinguish between the two categories. So category theory is designed to overlook some very important differences between graphs. See also http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/principle+of+equivalence.