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Relating Different Semantics for Object Petri Nets, Formal Proofs and Examples.

Valk, Rüdiger

00: Report No. FBI-HH-B-226, pages 1-50. University of Hamburg, Department for Computer Science, April 2000.

Abstract: Object Nets belong to a class of Petri nets allowing for a two-level way of modeling by giving tokens of a Petri net the structure of a Petri net again. The usefulness of this approach has been shown in numerous case studies, ranging from modeling distributed algorithms to workflow and flexible manufacturing systems. It allows for the modeling of real world objects by tokens having their own dynamical behavior. As it is well-known from the field of distributed systems in general, (at least) two different ways of object management are of interest when implementing remote access: either by referencing to a single representation or by creating copies which are treated in a consistent way.

In analogy to programming language constructs, this is denoted by reference and value semantics, respectively. In this contribution value and reference semantics of object nets are formally defined. Conditions are presented that allow the transfer from one of these semantics to the other. While the proof techniques strongly rely on partial orders (causal nets), the comparison is made on the basis of occurrence sequences, which serve as a common description language.


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