Table 1.
The Five Petri Net (PN) Tools and Their Mathematical and Usability Capabilities
| Mobius |
TimeNET |
Design/CPN |
Genomic Object Net |
Woflan |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Formalism | SAN | EDSPN | HLPN | Hybrid PN | PN |
| Modeling features | |||||
| Hierarchy (transition decomposed into a net of [sub]processes) | + | ||||
| Composition (several copies of a net interact) | + | ||||
| Process duration is stochastic (e.g., exponential rate) | + | + | |||
| Process duration is constant,>1 | + | + | + | + | |
| Continuous transitions (transition expressed as a differential equation) | + | ||||
| Probabilities of conflicting processes (e.g., 80% of the time a malaria parasite pursues a non-sexual life cycle; 20% sexual) | + | Not working | Not directly | Not working | |
| Inhibition arcs linking a place to a transition represent transitions that are disabled when there are tokens in the linked input places | + | + | |||
| Test arcs are like inhibition arcs, but firing the transition does not consume the tokens in the input places | + | ||||
| Arc weight requires more than one item to flow from/to a place when a transition fires (e.g., 2P1 + P2→P3) | Can be modeled by gates | + | + | + | |
| Gates can be used to express complex marking changes when transitions fire | + | ||||
| Colored tokens have data values; transitions in the net depend on these values | + | ||||
| Analysis types | |||||
| Boundedness (no infinite token accumulation); liveness (all transitions may fire) | + | ||||
| Place invariants (set of places in which the total amount of tokens is constant); Conflicting transitions (enabled under same conditions) | + | + | |||
| State space (number of different states) | + | ||||
| Traps (once a token enters a trap place, it does not leave it) | + | ||||
| Siphons (once a token leaves a siphon, it does not return to it) | |||||
| Token game (interactive simulation of tokens moving in net) | + | + | + | ||
| Performance measures + simulation/numerical analysis | + | + | Not directly | + | |
| Plots of simulation results | + | Not directly | + | ||
| Reachability (is a marking reachable from initial marking) | Not working | ||||
| Technical features | |||||
| Exchange format | + | + | + | + | |
| Operating system | Windows, Solaris, Linux | Linux, Solaris | Solaris, Linux, HP-UX SGI-Irix | Mac, Windows, Solaris | Windows |
| User interface | ++++ | +++ | ++ | ++++ | +++ |
| Technical support | ++++ | +++ | +++ | +++ | |
| License | Free acd | Free acd | Free | Free | Free |
EDSPN = extended deterministic and stochastic Petri Nets (immediate or expolynomially timed transitions in which at most one expolynomially timed transition may be enabled in each marking); SAN = stochastic activity networks; CPN = colored Petri Net; HLPN = high-level Petri Nets (color, hierarchy, time); acd = academic; Not directly = functions that can be defined in code but are not supported directly. The number of + signs indicates the level of support.