Separation of Control and Data Flow in High-Level Petri Nets: Transforming Dual Flow Nets into Object Petri Nets

This paper summarises two approaches, Dual Flow Nets (DFN) and Object Petri Nets (OPN), and offers a translation mechanism between them. While the DFN model tackles the separation of control and data flow computing aspects, the OPN model has a more generalised structure. The aim of this paper is to show how the modelling based on control/data-flow analysis can benefit from an object-based Petri net approach. Tool support and a translation mechanism that is faithful are pesented, giving an extra dimension (hierarchy) to the existing paradigm of control and data flow interacting in a model. Our methodology provides a comprehensive separation of these two parts, which can be used to feed analysis or synthesis tools, while still being able to reason about both parts through formal methods of verification.