Consistency in Multi-Viewpoint Architectural Design of Enterprise Information Systems

Different stakeholders in the design of an enterprise information system have their own view on that design. To help produce a coherent design this paper presents a framework that aids in specifying relations between such views. To help produce a consistent design the framework also aids in specifying consistency rules that apply to the view relations and in checking the consistency according to those rules. The framework focuses on the higher levels of abstraction in a design, we refer to design at those levels of abstraction as architectural design. The highest level of abstraction that we consider is that of business process design and the lowest level is that of software component design. The contribution of our framework is that it provides a collection of basic concepts that is common to viewpoints in the area of enterprise information systems. These basic concepts aid in relating viewpoints by providing: (i) a common terminology that helps stakeholders to understand each others concepts; and (ii) a basis for defining re-usable consistency rules. In particular we define re-usable rules to check consistency between behavioural views that overlap or are a refinement of each other. We also present an architecture for a tool suite that supports our framework. We show that our framework can be applied, by performing a case study in which we specify the relations and consistency rules between the RM-ODP enterprise, computational and information viewpoints

From RT-LOTOS to Time Petri Nets new foundations for a verification platform

The formal description technique RT-LOTOS has been selected as intermediate language to add formality to a real-time UML profile named TURTLE. For this sake, an RT-LOTOS verification platform has been developed for early detection of design errors in real-time system models. The paper discusses an extension of the platform by inclusion of verification tools developed for Time Petri Nets. The starting point is the definition of RT-LOTOS to TPN translation patterns. In particular, we introduce the concept of components embedding Time Petri Nets. The translation patterns are implemented in a prototype tool which takes as input an RT-LOTOS specification and outputs a TPN in the format admitted by the TINA tool. The efficiency of the proposed solution has been demonstrated on various case studies

Towards a Notion of Distributed Time for Petri Nets

We set the ground for research on a timed extension of Petri nets where time parameters are associated with tokens and arcs carry constraints that qualify the age of tokens required for enabling. The novelty is that, rather than a single global clock, we use a set of unrelated clocks --- possibly one per place --- allowing a local timing as well as distributed time synchronisation. We give a formal definition of the model and investigate properties of local versus global timing, including decidability issues and notions of processes of the respective models

Petri nets for systems and synthetic biology

We give a description of a Petri net-based framework for modelling and analysing biochemical pathways, which uni¯es the qualita- tive, stochastic and continuous paradigms. Each perspective adds its con- tribution to the understanding of the system, thus the three approaches do not compete, but complement each other. We illustrate our approach by applying it to an extended model of the three stage cascade, which forms the core of the ERK signal transduction pathway. Consequently our focus is on transient behaviour analysis. We demonstrate how quali- tative descriptions are abstractions over stochastic or continuous descrip- tions, and show that the stochastic and continuous models approximate each other. Although our framework is based on Petri nets, it can be applied more widely to other formalisms which are used to model and analyse biochemical networks

A Polynomial Translation of pi-calculus FCPs to Safe Petri Nets

We develop a polynomial translation from finite control pi-calculus processes to safe low-level Petri nets. To our knowledge, this is the first such translation. It is natural in that there is a close correspondence between the control flows, enjoys a bisimulation result, and is suitable for practical model checking.Comment: To appear in special issue on best papers of CONCUR'12 of Logical Methods in Computer Scienc

A Comparison of Petri Net Semantics under the Collective Token Philosophy

In recent years, several semantics for place/transition Petri nets have been proposed that adopt the collective token philosophy. We investigate distinctions and similarities between three such models, namely configuration structures, concurrent transition systems, and (strictly) symmetric (strict) monoidal categories. We use the notion of adjunction to express each connection. We also present a purely logical description of the collective token interpretation of net behaviours in terms of theories and theory morphisms in partial membership equational logic

Isotactics as a foundation for alignment and abstraction of behavioral models

There are many use cases in business process management that require the comparison of behavioral models. For instance, verifying equivalence is the basis for assessing whether a technical workflow correctly implements a business process, or whether a process realization conforms to a reference process. This paper proposes an equivalence relation for models that describe behaviors based on the concurrency semantics of net theory and for which an alignment relation has been defined. This equivalence, called isotactics, preserves the level of concurrency of aligned operations. Furthermore, we elaborate on the conditions under which an alignment relation can be classified as an abstraction. Finally, we show that alignment relations induced by structural refinements of behavioral models are indeed behavioral abstractions

Petri net equivalence

Determining whether two Petri nets are equivalent is an interesting problem from both practical and theoretical standpoints. Although it is undecidable in the general case, for many interesting nets the equivalence problem is solvable. This paper explores, mostly from a theoretical point of view, some of the issues of Petri net equivalence, including both reachability sets and languages. Some new definitions of reachability set equivalence are described which allow the markings of some places to be treated identically or ignored, analogous to the Petri net languages in which multiple transitions may be labeled with the same symbol or with the empty string. The complexity of some decidable Petri net equivalence problems is analyzed

An Approach to the Category of Net Computations

We introduce the notion of strongly concatenable process as a refinement of concatenable processes [DMM89] which can be expressed axiomatically via a functor $Q[-]$ from the category of Petri nets to an appropriate category of symmetric strict monoidal categories, in the precise sense that, for each net $N$, the strongly concatenable processes of $N$ are isomorphic to the arrows of $Q[N]$. In addition, we identify a coreflection right adjoint to $Q[-]$ and characterize its replete image, thus yielding an axiomatization of the category of net computations

On the Category of Petri Net Computations

We introduce the notion of strongly concatenable process as a refinement of concatenable processes [DMM89] which can be expressed axiomatically via a functor $Q[-]$ from the category of Petri nets to an appropriate category of symmetric strict monoidal categories, in the precise sense that, for each net $N$, the strongly concatenable processes of $N$ are isomorphic to the arrows of $Q[-]$. In addition, we identify a coreflection right adjoint to $Q[-]$ and characterize its replete image, thus yielding an axiomatization of the category of net computations