Translating Safe Petri Nets to Statecharts in a Structure-Preserving Way

Abstract

Abstract. Statecharts and Petri nets are two popular visual formalisms for modelling complex systems that exhibit concurrency. Both formalisms are supported by various design tools. To enable the automated exchange of models between Petri net and statechart tools, we present a structural, polynomial algorithm that translates safe Petri nets into statecharts. The translation algorithm preserves both the structure and the behaviour of the input net. The algorithm can fail, since not every safe net has a statechart translation that preserves both its structure and behaviour. The algorithm is proven correct and the class of safe nets for which the algorithm succeeds is formally characterised. We show that the algorithm can also fail for some nets that do have a structure-and behaviour-preserving statechart translation, but this incompleteness does not appear to be a severe limitation in practice.

Synthesizing data-centric models from business process models

“…The synthesis of filtered activity diagrams to state machines, defined in earlier work [9], is implemented by first mapping activity diagrams to Petri nets (Step 6 ) and next applying in Step 7 Petri-net reduction rules that construct a state machine with state hierarchy [8,43] to the generated Petri nets. This results in a valid state machine for a Petri net if the net has been reduced to exactly one place.…”

Synthesizing object life cycles from business process models

“…Table 1 shows that the prototype constructs for each activity diagram a hierarchical statechart in a less than a second. We have shown before that the synthesis procedure defined in Section 4 runs in polynomial time [3] and that the GrGenimplementation scales well for large input models [16].…”

“…In the next phase, a hierarchical statechart is synthesized from the activity diagram. Basis for the synthesis is an existing, formally defined translation from Petri nets to statecharts [3]. The syntax of Petri nets closely resembles that of activity diagrams.…”

The Petri-Nets to Statecharts Transformation Case

“…The transformation should apply the reduction rules as long as possible to the input elements. For input Petri-Nets in the class of nets defined by [4], the reduction process should terminate with exactly one Place left. The equivalent AND state st should not have any parent Compound state.…”