An event structure semantics for general Petri nets

Abstract

In this paper we address the following question: What type of event structures are suitable for representing the behaviour of general Petri nets? As a partial answer to this question we define a new class of event structures called local event structures and identify a subclass called UL-event structures. We propose that UL-event structures are appropriate for capturing the behaviour of general Petri nets. Our answer is a partial one in that in the proposed event structure semantics, auto-concurrency is filtered out from the behaviour of Petri nets. It turns out that this limited event structure semantics for Petri nets is nevertheless a non-trivial and conservative extension of the (prime) event structure semantics of 1-safe Petri nets provided in Nielsen et al. (1981). We also show that the strong relationship between prime event structures and 1-safe Petri nets established in a categorical framework in Winskel (1987) can be extended to the present setting, provided we restrict our attention to the subclass of Petri nets whose behaviours do not exhibit any auto-concurrency. Finally, we show that Winskel's general and stable event structures can be smoothly related to local event structures and that similarly prime event structures can be related to UL-event structures.