In: Recent Trends in Algebraic Development Techniques, 16th International Workshop, WADT 2002, Frauenchiemsee, Germany, September 24-27, 2002, pages 145-164. Volume 2755 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science --- Springer-Verlag, November 2003.
Abstract: Pre-nets have been recently proposed as a means of providing a functorial algebraic semantics to Petri nets (possibly with read arcs), overcoming some previously unsolved subtleties of the classical model. Here we develop a functorial semantics for pre-nets following a sibling classical approach based on an unfolding construction. Any pre-net is mapped to an acyclic branching net, representing its behaviour, then to a prime event structure and finally to a finitary prime algebraic domain. Then the algebraic and unfolding view are reconciled: we exploit the algebraic semantics to define a functor from the category of pre-nets to the category of domains that is shown to be naturally isomorphic to the unfolding-based functor. All the results are extended to pre-nets with read arcs.