Open and Extensible Business Process Simulator

Äriprotesesside haldamise üheks väga oluliseks osaks on protsesside simuleerimine. Simuleerimine annab hea võimaluse kontrollida protsesside toimimist ning leida muutmist vajavaid kitsaskohti. Käesolevas magistritöös vaatleme olemasolevaid protsesside simuleerimise keskkondi, mida peetakse hetkel selle valdkonna tippudeks (näiteks TIBCO, IBM WebSphere jt), ning uurime nendes esinevaid probleeme seoses funktsionaalsuse ja laiendatavuse puudumisega. Praktiliselt kõikidel uuritud vahenditel oli probleeme keerukama ülesehitusega protsesside simuleerimisel ning puudub võimalus töövahendit äridomeeni spetsiifikast lähtuvalt vajadusel muuta või täiendada. Magistritöö põhiosa on jagatud kaheks. Esimeses osas toome välja protsessielementide teisendused defacto standard modelleerimisnotatsioonist BPMN, madalama taseme modelleerimiselementideks CPN keeles. Teisenduse kasulikkus seisneb selles, et CPN keeles olev protsess on simuleeritav vahendiga CPN Tools, ning konverteerimist on võimalik kohendada vastavalt vajadustele. Näiteks on võimalus lisada ärispetsiifilisi simulatsiooniandmeid või kasutada mittestandardseid tööde jaotamise mustreid. Magistritöö teises osas töötame välja täiesti uue protsesside konverteerimise arhitektuuri, mis on kättesaadav avatud lähtekoodina, ning on kergesti laiendatav. Siinkohal tähendab laiendatavus seda, et välja töötatud arhitektuuri on võimalik kasutada erinevatest modelleerimiskeeltest protsesside konverteerimiseks CPN keelde. Näidisena oleme loonud ka prototüübi, mis on suuteline teisendama enamlevinud BPMN elemente simuleerimisvalmidusega CPN elementideks. Edasiste töödena näeme me võimalust laiendada olemasolevat prototüüpi toetamaks kõiki BPMN elemente ning keerulisi simulatsiooniandmeid. Prototüüpi on võimalik ka edasi arendada simuleerimise veebiteenuseks, mida saaksid edukalt kasutada erinevad modelleerimiskeskkonnad simulatsioonide läbiviimiseks.Existing business process simulation tools suffer from two limitations: (i) they allow one to simulate processes that are designed only in the same tool; and (ii) the simulation engine is built-in and it is not extensible. The aim of this thesis is to move towards overcoming these two limitations. The contribution of the thesis is twofold. First we provide some of the commonly used Business Process Notation (BPMN) mappings to Coloured Petri Net (CPN) modules while considering the need to use these converted models for simulation purposes. This means that the mappings have to be able to handle simulation data and can generate simulation output into log files. Secondly we provide a new process model converter architecture that is open and extensible and it is responsible for generating a ready to simulate CPN models

A Modular Integrated Development Environment for Coloured Petri Net Models

Distributed software systems are becoming increasingly popular and used. Most of modern distributed systems provide the application of concurrency, also in- cluding resource sharing, communication and synchronization between different modules. These distributed systems comes with the challenges concerning data synchronization, scalability and performance, among others. By modelling these systems helps with solving these challenges, and there exists multiple tools for this. CPN Tools is one of these tools. CPN Tools is used for editing, simulating and analyzing Coloured Petri nets models. A need has been identified to devel- oped new software for develop new and up to date tools for editing, simulating and analyzing Coloured Petri nets to further development and fit the increasing need for distributed systems. Answering this need, a new simulating tool has been proposed. This thesis proposes an editor focusing on the modelling and visualization with the potentially integrate this simulator. This editor consists of an application running on Electron and using GoJS for modelling. This has resulted in a modelling tool for creating CPN models, with the possibility of increased abstraction of the models of the modern distributed systems.Masteroppgave i Programvareutvikling samarbeid med HVLPROG399MAMN-PRO

Neighborhood Detection in Mobile Ad-Hoc Network Using Colored Petri Net

Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) [2] is a language for the modeling and validation of systems in which concurrency, communication [6], and synchronization play a major role. Colored Petri Nets is a discrete-event modeling language combining Petri nets with the functional programming language Standard ML. Petri nets provide the foundation of the graphical notation and the basic primitives for modeling concurrency, communication, and synchronization. Standard ML provides the primitives for the definition of data types, describing data manipulation, and for creating compact and parameterizable models. A CPN model of a system is an executable model representing the states of the system and the events (transitions) that can cause the system to change state [4]. The CPN language makes it possible to organize a model as a set of modules, and it includes a time concept for representing the time taken to execute events in the modeled system. In a mobile ad-hoc network(MANET) mobile nodes directly send messages to each other via wireless transmission. A node can send a message to another node beyond its transmission range by using other nodes as relay points, and thus a node can function as a router [1]. Typical applications of MANETS include defense systems such as battlefield survivability and disaster recovery. The research on MANETs originates from part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency(ARPA) project in the 1970s [1]. With the explosive growth of the Internet and mobile communication networks, challenging requirements have been introduced into MANETs and designing routing protocols has become more complex. One approach for ensuring correctness of an existing routing protocol is to create a formal model for the protocol and analyze the model to determine if indeed the protocol provides the defined service correctly. Colored Petri Nets are a suitable modeling language for this purpose as it can conveniently express non-determinism, concurrency and different levels of abstraction that are inherent in routing protocols. However, it is not easy to build a CPN model of a MANET because a node can move in and out of its transmission range and thus the MANET‟s topology dynamically changes. In this paper we propose an algorithm for addressing such mobility problem of a MANET [1]. Using this algorithm a node can find its neighbors ,which are dynamically changing, at any instant of time

Practical Use of High-level Petri Nets

This booklet contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Practical Use of High-level Petri Nets, June 27, 2000. The workshop is part of the 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets organised by the CPN group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. The workshop papers are available in electronic form via the web pages: http://www.daimi.au.dk/pn2000/proceeding

An Automated Framework for BPMN Model Verification Achieving Branch Coverage

BPMN model is used in software development process that the procedural logics of software are described in term of graphical representation. Formal verification using colored Petri net (CPN) can be used to prove whether a designed BPMN model is frees of undesirable properties such as deadlock and unreachable task, and meets user requirements or not. Although there are many researches providing the transformation rules and frameworks for automating and verifying the CPN model, the CPN markings determination covering all execution paths is quite cumbersome. This paper proposes an automated BPMN verification framework that integrates the BPMN modeling tool and the CPN model checker together. The designed BPMN model is transformed into a CPN model and control flow graph (CFG). The CFG is used to create the execution paths and to find the interleaved activities. The interleaved activities are then considered for creating the CPN port places and markings by an applying of the branch coverage testing technique. Behaviors of the CPN model are analyzed by using a state space analysis based on the CPN model and automated markings. Our framework has been implemented as an Eclipse BPMN modeler plugin, and it is tested with the five case studies. The results show that our framework is practical. It can automate the CPN models from the BPMN model and guide the designers regarding the CPN markings determination to achieve branch coverage criteria

Practical Use of High-level Petri Nets

This booklet contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Practical Use of High-level Petri Nets, June 27, 2000. The workshop is part of the 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets organised by the CPN group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. The workshop papers are available in electronic form via the web pages: http://www.daimi.au.dk/pn2000/proceeding

Representing Conversations for Scalable Overhearing

Open distributed multi-agent systems are gaining interest in the academic community and in industry. In such open settings, agents are often coordinated using standardized agent conversation protocols. The representation of such protocols (for analysis, validation, monitoring, etc) is an important aspect of multi-agent applications. Recently, Petri nets have been shown to be an interesting approach to such representation, and radically different approaches using Petri nets have been proposed. However, their relative strengths and weaknesses have not been examined. Moreover, their scalability and suitability for different tasks have not been addressed. This paper addresses both these challenges. First, we analyze existing Petri net representations in terms of their scalability and appropriateness for overhearing, an important task in monitoring open multi-agent systems. Then, building on the insights gained, we introduce a novel representation using Colored Petri nets that explicitly represent legal joint conversation states and messages. This representation approach offers significant improvements in scalability and is particularly suitable for overhearing. Furthermore, we show that this new representation offers a comprehensive coverage of all conversation features of FIPA conversation standards. We also present a procedure for transforming AUML conversation protocol diagrams (a standard human-readable representation), to our Colored Petri net representation