A new operational representation of dependencies in Event Structures

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel Petri net model that captures context-dependent dependencies in event structures, providing an operational perspective on evolving system dependencies.

Contribution

It proposes a new Petri net framework with contextual arcs to represent dynamic dependencies in event structures, bridging the gap between event-based and token-based models.

Findings

Defines a new operational Petri net model with contextual arcs

Demonstrates how dependencies evolve during system execution

Provides a formal correspondence between event structures and Petri nets

Abstract

The execution of an event in a complex and distributed system where the dependencies vary during the evolution of the system can be represented in many ways, and one of them is to use Context-Dependent Event structures. Event structures are related to Petri nets. The aim of this paper is to propose what can be the appropriate kind of Petri net corresponding to Context-Dependent Event structures, giving an operational flavour to the dependencies represented in a Context/Dependent Event structure. Dependencies are often operationally represented, in Petri nets, by tokens produced by activities and consumed by others. Here we shift the perspective using contextual arcs to characterize what has happened so far and in this way to describe the dependencies among the various activities.