Vicinity Respecting Homomorphisms for Abstracting System Requirements

ing System Requirements Jörg Desel and Agathe Merceron 1 Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt [email protected] 2 Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin [email protected] Abstract. This paper is concerned with structuring system requirements on an abstract conceptual level. Channel/Agency Petri nets are taken as a formal model. They allow to represent functional aspects as well as data aspects of the requirements in a graphical way. Vicinity respecting homomorphisms are presented as a means to refine and abstract these nets. They preserve paths, i.e., dependencies between computational elements and they preserve important structural properties of nets, such as Sand T-components, siphons and traps and the free choice property. These properties have important interpretations for marked Petri nets and can therefore be used for the analysis of system models at more concrete levels. This paper is concerned with structuring system requirements on an abstract conceptual level. Channel/Agency Petri nets are taken as a formal model. They allow to represent functional aspects as well as data aspects of the requirements in a graphical way. Vicinity respecting homomorphisms are presented as a means to refine and abstract these nets. They preserve paths, i.e., dependencies between computational elements and they preserve important structural properties of nets, such as Sand T-components, siphons and traps and the free choice property. These properties have important interpretations for marked Petri nets and can therefore be used for the analysis of system models at more concrete levels.