Component Tools: Integrating Petri Nets with Other Formal Methods

Abstract

AbstractThe field of formal methods provides all kinds of powerful techniques for the specification, design, verification, validation, and ramp-up of systems. Petri nets, in different versions and “levels”, are among those techniques that have successfully been used in various fields of application and for different engineering tasks.During the full development process of a system, different engineers have different tasks. Each engineering task has its specific purpose and, therefore, some version of Petri net or some formal method is better suited for this task than others. In order to take full advantage of formal methods, engineers need to switch between different techniques.Unfortunately, different techniques have different underlying forma- lisms and notations, they use different concepts and methods, and they are supported by different and, in many cases, incompatible tools. Therefore, most applications of formal methods are restricted to one technique, formalism, and tool – though using several techniques in combination would have many benefits.The Component Tools project aims at easing the application and the integration of several formal methods with different underlying formalisms, notations, and tools for all kinds of application areas. To this end, Component Tools supports the definition of components with different underlying formal models in different notations and on different levels of abstraction for different purposes. Moreover, Component Tools supports the definition of transformations to different tools. This way, an engineer can use these components for designing, verifying, and validating a system with support from formal methods and their tools under a uniform graphical user interface – without even knowing the details of the underlying techniques and formalisms.Initially, Component Tools was inspired by the use of different versions of Petri nets during the development process. But, it turned out that the concepts of Component Tools are much more general and can be used for integrating other formal methods. In this paper, we outline the basic idea, the concepts, and the main ingredients of Component Tools by using a simplified example from the area of flexible manufacturing systems, where the models are Petri nets on different levels of abstraction.KeywordsPetri netsformal methodsintegrationcomponentstransformationsystem engineering