In: Reisig, W.; Rozenberg, G.: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1492: Lectures on Petri Nets II: Applications. Springer-Verlag, 1998. ISBN: 3-540-65307-4.
Abstract: The development of Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets or CPN) has been driven by the desire to develop a modelling language at the same time theoretically well-founded and versatile enough to be used in practice for systems of the size and complexity found in typical industrial projects. To achieve this, we have combined the strength of Petri nets with the strength of programming languages. Petri nets provide the primitives for describing synchronisation of concurrent processes, while programming languages provide the primitives for definition of data types and manipulation of their data values.
The paper focuses on the practical use of Coloured Petri Nets. It introduces the basic ideas behind the CPN language, and it illustrates how CPN models can be analysed by means of simulation, state spaces and condensed state spaces. The paper also describes how CP-nets can be extended with a time concept. In this way it is also possible to use CP-nets for performance evaluation, i.e., to evaluate the speed by which a system operates. Finally, we describe a set of computer tools that support the use of CP-nets. This tool set is used by more than three hundred organisations in forty different countries - including seventy-five commercial companies. It is available free of charge, also for commercial use.
Keywords: High-level Petri Nets, Coloured Petri Nets, Practical Use, Modelling, Validation, Verification, State Spaces, Tool Support.