scholarly journals Teaching Coloured Petri Nets - a Gentle Introduction to Formal Methods in a Distributed Systems Course

1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (520) ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Christensen ◽  
Kjeld Høyer Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Systems ◽  
Petri Nets ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Formal Method ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Coloured Petri Nets ◽  
Basic Concepts

<p>This paper is about the two compulsory project assignments set to the students in an undergraduate course on distributed systems. In the first assignment the students design and validate a non-trivial layered protocol by means of Coloured Petri Nets, and in the second they implement the designed protocol in an object-oriented language. From the two assignments the students experience that Coloured Petri Nets, as a formal method, are useful for designing and analysing distributed systems. In the course students are introduced to basic concepts and techniques for distributed systems, and it is explained that such systems are often too complex to manage without using formal methods. In this paper we also report on our experience with teaching the course and describe the didactic methods applied. Based on the obtained experience we conclude that the combination of distributed systems and Coloured Petri Nets is fruitful --- the two areas complement each other. Although our experiences origin in Coloured Petri Nets, we believe that many of our observations hold for other formal methods as well.</p><p><strong>Topics.</strong> Education issues related to nets; Coloured Petri Nets; distributed systems; experience with using nets,case studies; applications of nets to protocols.</p>

scholarly journals Modelling and Analysis of Distributed Program Execution in BETA Using Coloured Petri Nets

1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (513) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Bæk Jørgensen ◽  
Kjeld Høyer Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Petri Nets ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Coloured Petri Nets ◽  
Program Execution ◽  
Shared Resources ◽  
Computer Tools ◽  
Remote Object ◽  
Critical Regions

<p>Recently, abstractions supporting distributed program execution in the object-oriented language BETA have been designed. A BETA object on one computer may invoke a remote object, i.e., an object hosted by another computer. In this project, the formalism of Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets or CPN) is used to describe and analyse the protocol for remote object invocation. In the first place, we build a model in order to describe, understand, and improve the protocol. Remote object invocation in BETA is modelled on the level of threads (lightweight processes) with emphasis on the competition for access to critical regions and shared resources. Secondly, the model is analysed. It is formally proved that it has a set of desirable properties, e.g., absence of dead markings.</p><p><strong>Topics:</strong> Systemdesign and verfication using nets; higher-level nets models; computer tools for nets; experience with using nets, case studies; application of nets to protocols.</p>

scholarly journals Coloured Petri Nets - a Pragmatic Formal Method for Designing and Analysing Distributed Systems

1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (522) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjeld Høyer Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Formal Methods ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Formal Method ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Coloured Petri Nets ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Language Constructs ◽  
Representative Selection ◽  
Phd Thesis ◽  
Selection Of

<p>The thesis consists of six <em>individual</em> papers, where the present paper contains the mandatory overview, while the remaining five papers are found separately from the overview. The five papers can roughly be divided into three areas of research, namely case studies, education, and extensions to the CPN method.</p><p>The primary purpose of the PhD thesis is to study the pragmatics, practical aspects, and intuition of CP-nets viewed as a formal method for describing and reasoning about concurrent systems. The perspective of pragmatics is our leitmotif, but at the same time in the context of CP-nets it is a kind of hypothesis of this thesis. This overview paper summarises the research conducted as an investigation of the hypothesis in the three areas of case studies, education, and extensions.</p><p>The provoking claim of pragmatics should not be underestimated. In the present overview of the thesis, the CPN method is compared with a representative selection of formal methods. The graphics and simplicity of semantics, yet generality and expressiveness of the language constructs, essentially makes CP-nets a viable and attractive alternative to other formal methods. Similar graphical formal methods, such as SDL and Statecharts, typically have significantly more complicated semantics, or are domain-specific languages.</p><p>research conducted in this thesis, opens a new complex of problems. Firstly, to get wider acceptance of CP-nets in industry, it is important to identify fruitful areas for the effective introduction of the CPN method. Secondly, it would be useful to identify a few extensions to the CPN method inspired by specific domains for easier adaption in industry. Thirdly, which analysis methods do future systems make use of?</p>

Specifying with Interface and Trait Abstractions in Abstract State Machines: A Controlled Experiment

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Philipp Paulweber ◽  
Georg Simhandl ◽  
Uwe Zdun
Keyword(s):  
Formal Methods ◽  
Formal Method ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Controlled Experiment ◽  
Specification Languages ◽  
Randomized Design ◽  
Textual Description ◽  
Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽  
Completely Randomized Design ◽  
Experimental Group

Abstract State Machine (ASM) theory is a well-known state-based formal method. As in other state-based formal methods, the proposed specification languages for ASMs still lack easy-to-comprehend abstractions to express structural and behavioral aspects of specifications. Our goal is to investigate object-oriented abstractions such as interfaces and traits for ASM-based specification languages. We report on a controlled experiment with 98 participants to study the specification efficiency and effectiveness in which participants needed to comprehend an informal specification as problem (stimulus) in form of a textual description and express a corresponding solution in form of a textual ASM specification using either interface or trait syntax extensions. The study was carried out with a completely randomized design and one alternative (interface or trait) per experimental group. The results indicate that specification effectiveness of the traits experiment group shows a better performance compared to the interfaces experiment group, but specification efficiency shows no statistically significant differences. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study studying the specification effectiveness and efficiency of object-oriented abstractions in the context of formal methods.

Towards the Integration of a Formal Object-Oriented Method and Relational Unified Process

2011 ◽  
pp. 101-133
Author(s):  
Jing Liu ◽  
Zhiming Lui ◽  
Xiaoshan Li ◽  
He Jifend ◽  
Yifeng Chen
Keyword(s):  
Formal Methods ◽  
Formal Method ◽  
System Development ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Use Case ◽  
Object Oriented Method ◽  
Unified Process ◽  
Sound Foundation

In this chapter, we study the use of a formal object-oriented method within Relational Unified Process (RUP). Our purposes are (a) to unify different views of UML models; (b) to enhance RUP and UML with a formal method to improve the quality of software; (c) to scale up the use of the formal method with the use-case driven, iterative and incremental aspects of RUP. Our overall aim is to establish a sound foundation of RUP and UML and scale up the use of formal methods in software-intensive system development.

Validation and Verification of Software Systems Using Virtual Reality and Coloured Petri Nets

2007 ◽  
pp. 28-54
Author(s):  
Hyggo Almeida ◽  
Leandro Silva ◽  
Glauber Ferreira ◽  
Emerson Loureiro ◽  
Angelo Perkusich
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Embedded System ◽  
Petri Nets ◽  
Formal Methods ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Coloured Petri Nets ◽  
Validation And Verification ◽  
Verification Techniques

Validation and verification techniques have been identified as suitable mechanisms to determine if the software meets the needs of the user and to verify if the software works correctly. However, the existing verification techniques do not support friendly visualization. Also, validation techniques with friendly visualization mechanisms do not allow the verification of the system’s correctness. In this chapter, we present a method for the validation and verification of software systems through the integration of formal methods and virtual reality. Furthermore, a software tool associated with such a method is also described along with an embedded system case study.

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