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Coloured petri nets: A high level language for system design and analysis

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Advances in Petri Nets 1990 (ICATPN 1989)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 483))

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Abstract

This paper describes how Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets) have been developed — from being a promising theoretical model to being a full-fledged language for the design, specification, simulation, validation and implementation of large software systems (and other systems in which human beings and/or computers communicate by means of some more or less formal rules).

First CP-nets are introduced by means of a small example and a formal definition of their structure and behaviour is presented. Then we describe how to extend CP-nets by a set of hierarchy constructs (allowing a hierarchical CP-net to consist of many different subnets, which are related to each other in a formal way). Next we describe how to analyse CP-nets, how to support them by various computer tools, and we also describe some typical applications. Finally, a number of future extensions are discussed (of the net model and the supporting software).

The non-hierarchical CP-nets in the present paper are analogous to the CP-nets defined in [35] and the High-level Petri Nets defined in [33]. In all three papers CP-nets (and HL-nets) have two different representations: The expression representation uses are expressions and guards, while the function representation uses linear functions between multi-sets. Moreover, there are formal translations between the two representations (in both directions). In [33] and [35] we used the expression representation to describe systems, while we used the function representation for all the different kinds of analysis. It has, however, turned out that it only is necessary to turn to functions when we deal with invariant analysis, and this means that we now use the expression representation for all purposes — except for the calculation of invariants. This change is important for the practical use of CP-nets — because it means that the function representation and the translations (which are a bit mathematically complex) no longer are parts of the basic definition of CP-nets. Instead they are parts of the invariant method (which anyway demands considerable mathematical skills).

The development of CP-nets has been supported by several grants from the Danish National Science Research Council.

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  1. Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade, Bldg. 540, DK-8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Kurt Jensen

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  1. Kurt Jensen
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Grzegorz Rozenberg

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Jensen, K. (1991). Coloured petri nets: A high level language for system design and analysis. In: Rozenberg, G. (eds) Advances in Petri Nets 1990. ICATPN 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 483. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53863-1_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53863-1_31

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