An approach to Petri net based integration of qualitative and quantitative analysis of parallel systems

An innovative Petri net (PN) based methodology is proposed to integrate qualitative and quantitative analysis methods of parallel software systems. The approach combines qualitative analysis, monitoring and testing as well as quantitative analysis based on a net-based intermediate representation. The validation of qualitive properties is done in two steps: First, context checking of general semantic properties by a suitable combination of static and dynamic PN based analysis techniques and second, verification of special semantic properties. The validation of quantitative properties is based on so-called locally Markovian Object Nets which are obtained from the qualitative models by property-preserving structural compression and quantitative expansion. The necessary frequency and delay attributes are provided by a monitoring and testing component. Here, the net-based testing method supports also a systematic test of parallel systems. Techniques to derive automatically dedicated test su ites and to measure the test coverage obtained are important features of this systematic testing. The basic ideas are highlighted by a running example.