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Petri net workbench

latest update: March 23, 2019, at 02:11 PM

Objectives

General objectives of current research and development efforts are:

• The definition of a general framework for an integrated Petri net workbench. It should be possible to integrate at any time new Petri net based analysis tools into the workbench, if they have been proved to be useful in practice. These analysis tools have to be available by a common user interface.
• The combination of several validation methods on the basis of a common (internal) model representation. It have to allow informal validation (animation), semi-formal validation (testing), and formal validation (exhaustive analysis).
• The development of a methodology for software validation by means of Petri nets, which makes a suitable validation model available especially to those persons which are not familiar with Petri net theory.
• Rules and heuristics for the developers of software systems. Those rules comprise functional, dependability, and performance requirements. A suitable (semi-formal) notation language dedicated to special application areas is in development.

Results

Previous research and development efforts lead 1996 to the implementation of the Petri net editor PED. PED has been intensively used by our group and many other persons for academic and industrial purposes.

Based on this experience we developed prototypes of modelling and analysis tools:

• Snoopy to design hierarchical net models;
• Charlie, which is a close friend of Snoopy, supports the analysis of Petri net models;
• Woodstock, amiable with Snoopy and Charlie, will support the distributed analysis of Petri net models. For first results, see Master thesis of Stefan Dieringer (in German only) [Dier07].