Coverage visualization and analysis of net inscriptions in coloured Petri net models

Abstract

High-level Petri nets such as coloured Petri nets (CPNs) are characterized by the combination of Petri nets and a high-level programming language. In CPNs and CPN Tools, the inscriptions (e.g. arc expressions and guards) are specified using Standard ML. The application of simulation and state space exploration for validating CPN models traditionally focuses on behavioural properties related to net structure, i.e. places and transitions. This means that the net inscriptions are only implicitly validated, and the extent to which their sub-expressions have been covered is not made explicit. This paper extends our previous work on coverage analysis of net inscriptions of CPN models. In particular, we improve the CPN Tools library responsible for annotating, instrumenting and collecting the evaluation of Boolean conditions for determining the coverage criteria based on model executions. The library now automates most of the instrumentation parts that were done manually before and integrates the reports of the coverage analysis into the CPN Tools GUI. We evaluate our approach on new publicly available CPN models.