In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1589: Recent Trends in Algebraic Development Techniques, Proceedings WADT'98, pages 241-260. Springer-Verlag, 1999.
Abstract: In the area of Petri nets, many different developments have taken place within the last 30 years, in academia as well as in practice. For an adequate use in practice, a coherent and application oriented combination of various types and techniques for Petri nets is necessary. In order to attain a formal basis for different classes of Petri nets, abstract Petri nets are introduced. The essential point of abstract Petri nets is to allow different kinds of net structures as well as the combination of various kinds of data types. This means that in abstract Petri nets, the data type and the net structure part can be considered as abstract parameters which can be instantiated to different concrete net classes. It is shown that net classes, like place/transition nets, elementary nets, S-graphs, algebraic high-level nets, and predicate/transition nets are instantiations of abstract Petri nets. Moreover, colored Petri nets are discussed in this context.
Keywords: abstract Petri nets, colored Petri nets, high-level Petri nets.