Automated Code Generation from Petri Nets Based System Specification

The effectiveness of Petri nets for the modelling of reactive systems is demonstrated through the use of a class of non-autonomous hierarchical high-level Petri nets, named by Hierarchical Reactive Petri Nets. The translation between the Petri net model and executable code is presented and shown to be simple and direct allowing a smooth two-way automatic translation process between specification and code. The integration with other methods is easy not only at the specification level but also at the code level. It is possible to use wellknown verification techniques, namely state space generation. The use of Hierarchical Reactive Petri nets in the modelling and implementation of the controller part of the Model-View-Controller architecture is presented and graphical user interface applications where this approach has been successfully used is briefly described. Key-words: Petri nets, Automatic Code Generation, CASE tools, Graphical User Interface