Coloured Petri Nets - a Pragmatic Formal Method for Designing and Analysing Distributed Systems

The thesis consists of six individual papers, where the present paper contains the mandatory overview, while the remaining five papers are found separately from the overview. The five papers can roughly be divided into three areas of research, namely case studies, education, and extensions to the CPN method.The primary purpose of the PhD thesis is to study the pragmatics, practical aspects, and intuition of CP-nets viewed as a formal method for describing and reasoning about concurrent systems. The perspective of pragmatics is our leitmotif, but at the same time in the context of CP-nets it is a kind of hypothesis of this thesis. This overview paper summarises the research conducted as an investigation of the hypothesis in the three areas of case studies, education, and extensions.The provoking claim of pragmatics should not be underestimated. In the present overview of the thesis, the CPN method is compared with a representative selection of formal methods. The graphics and simplicity of semantics, yet generality and expressiveness of the language constructs, essentially makes CP-nets a viable and attractive alternative to other formal methods. Similar graphical formal methods, such as SDL and Statecharts, typically have significantly more complicated semantics, or are domain-specific languages.research conducted in this thesis, opens a new complex of problems. Firstly, to get wider acceptance of CP-nets in industry, it is important to identify fruitful areas for the effective introduction of the CPN method. Secondly, it would be useful to identify a few extensions to the CPN method inspired by specific domains for easier adaption in industry. Thirdly, which analysis methods do future systems make use of

Modelling the Work Flow of a Nuclear Waste Management Program

In this paper we describe a modelling project to improve a nuclear waste management program in charge of the creation of a new system for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste.SADT (Structured Analysis and Design Technique) is used in order to provide a work-flow description of the functions to be performed by the waste management program. This description is then translated into a number of Coloured Petri Nets (CPN or CP-nets) corresponding to different program functions where additional behavioural inscriptions provide basis for simulation. Each of these CP-nets is simulated to produce timed event charts that are useful for understanding the behaviour of the program functions under different scenarios. Then all the CPN models are linked together to form a single stand-alone application that is useful for validating the interaction and cooperation between the different program functions.A technique for linking executable CPN models is developed for supporting large modelling projects and parallel development of independent CPN models

Teaching Coloured Petri Nets - a Gentle Introduction to Formal Methods in a Distributed Systems Course

This paper is about the two compulsory project assignments set to the students in an undergraduate course on distributed systems. In the first assignment the students design and validate a non-trivial layered protocol by means of Coloured Petri Nets, and in the second they implement the designed protocol in an object-oriented language. From the two assignments the students experience that Coloured Petri Nets, as a formal method, are useful for designing and analysing distributed systems. In the course students are introduced to basic concepts and techniques for distributed systems, and it is explained that such systems are often too complex to manage without using formal methods. In this paper we also report on our experience with teaching the course and describe the didactic methods applied. Based on the obtained experience we conclude that the combination of distributed systems and Coloured Petri Nets is fruitful --- the two areas complement each other. Although our experiences origin in Coloured Petri Nets, we believe that many of our observations hold for other formal methods as well.Topics. Education issues related to nets; Coloured Petri Nets; distributed systems; experience with using nets,case studies; applications of nets to protocols

Modelling and Analysis of Distributed Program Execution in BETA Using Coloured Petri Nets

Recently, abstractions supporting distributed program execution in the object-oriented language BETA have been designed. A BETA object on one computer may invoke a remote object, i.e., an object hosted by another computer. In this project, the formalism of Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets or CPN) is used to describe and analyse the protocol for remote object invocation. In the first place, we build a model in order to describe, understand, and improve the protocol. Remote object invocation in BETA is modelled on the level of threads (lightweight processes) with emphasis on the competition for access to critical regions and shared resources. Secondly, the model is analysed. It is formally proved that it has a set of desirable properties, e.g., absence of dead markings.Topics: Systemdesign and verfication using nets; higher-level nets models; computer tools for nets; experience with using nets, case studies; application of nets to protocols

Coloured Petri Nets - a Pragmatic Formal Method for Designing and Analysing Distributed Systems

The thesis consists of six individual papers, where the present paper contains the mandatory overview, while the remaining five papers are found separately from the overview. The five papers can roughly be divided into three areas of research, namely case studies, education, and extensions to the CPN method. The primary purpose of the PhD thesis is to study the pragmatics, practical aspects, and intuition of CP-nets viewed as a formal method for describing and reasoning about concurrent systems. The perspective of pragmatics is our leitmotif, but at the same time in the context of CP-nets it is a kind of hypothesis of this thesis. This overview paper summarises the research conducted as an investigation of the hypothesis in the three areas of case studies, education, and extensions. The provoking claim of pragmatics should not be underestimated. In the present overview of the thesis, the CPN method is compared with a representative selection of formal methods. The graphics and simplici..

Some new thoughts on Neural Networks with complex connection matrices

In the literature neural networks are usually understood in the domain of real activation functions and connection weights. The concept of neural networks was generalized by M. Szilagyi to include complex connections between complex units. In the present note this idea is further developed. A mathematical model is presented, an expression for the network's energy as well as a complex learning rule are proposed

Modelling and Analysis of Distributed Program Execution in BETA Using Coloured Petri Nets

Recently, abstractions supporting distributed program execution in the object-oriented language BETA have been designed. A BETA object on one computer may invoke a remote object, i.e., an object hosted by another computer. In this project, the formalism of Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets or CPN) is used to describe and analyse the protocol for remote object invocation. In the first place, we build a model in order to describe, understand, and improve the protocol. Remote object invocation in BETA is modelled on the level of threads (lightweight processes) with emphasis on the competition for access to critical regions and shared resources. Secondly, the model is analysed. It is formally proved that it has a set of desirable properties, e.g., absence of dead markings