Integrating Software Engineering Methods and Petri Nets for the Specification and Prototyping of Complex Information Systems

. We present a Petri net based framework called G-Net for the modular design of complex information systems. The motivation of this framework is to integrate Petri net theory with a modular, objectoriented approach for the specification and prototyping of complex software systems. We use the client/server example to illustrate the G-Net specification of distributed systems, and how such a specification can be translated into a Predicate/Transition net for formal analysis. The differences between G-Net and hierarchical Petri net, as well as some limitations of the transformation technique, are then discussed. 1 Introduction First introduced by C.A. Petri in the early sixties, Petri nets have been actively studied and applied to many areas of computer science. Different variations or extensions of Petri nets have been proposed. The early Condition/Event (CE) nets and their extension, Place/Transition nets, serve as the basis for other higher level or more specialized Petri net ..