An Algebraic Petri Nets Emulator

Abstract

Petri Nets (PN) are a consolidated formal model for distributed systems. Classical PNs however are inadequate to model structural changes in systems' lifecycle. Many different attempts to face this issue have lead to lot of PN extensions, of particular concern are those matching the so called "nets within nets" paradigm. We present an alternative to this paradigm rigorously based on classical SP EC-inscribed nets, which have a sound algebraic initial semantics. Even if inspired by the same principles, and sharing most of the goals, our approach builds on a uniform framework and permits consolidated techniques to be exploited. The OBJ language is used to inscribe nets.