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WebSPN: A Flexible Tool for the Analysis of Non-Markovian Stochastic Petri Nets

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Principles of Performance and Reliability Modeling and Evaluation

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Reliability Engineering ((RELIABILITY))

Abstract

This chapter describes WebSPN, a modeling tool for the analysis of non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets (NMSPNs). WebSPN is a flexible tool, providing different solution techniques to deal with the complexity of the stochastic process underlying a NMSPN. The first solution technique that was developed within WebSPN is based on a discrete-time approximation of the stochastic behavior of the marking process which enables the analysis of a broad class of NMSPN models with preemptive repeat different (prd), preemptive resume (prs), and preemptive repeat identical (pri) concurrently enabled generally distributed transitions. One of the main drawbacks of the discrete state space expansion approach is the state space explosion that limits the tractability of complex models. For such a reason, a new solution technique has been implemented in the WebSPN tool, which is based on the use of multiterminal multi-valued decision diagram (MTMDD) and Kronecker matrices to store the expanded process. Such a solution works in the continuous time domain and enables the analysis of much more complex NMSPNs with prd and prs concurrently enabled generally distributed transitions. Finally, WebSPN also implements a simulative solution, thus providing a complete and powerful tool for modeling and analysis of real complex systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The WebSPN tool can be downloaded from http://webspn.unime.it after a simple registration procedure.

  2. 2.

    A marking \(M_i\) is a tuple, whose cardinality is \(|| \mathcal{P}||\), recording the number of tokens in each place.

  3. 3.

    Note that as time increases by \(\delta \), the total elapsed time at step i is \(i * \delta \). This explains why only the index indicating the time interval needs to be recorded.

  4. 4.

    The use of Saturation is incidental. The methodology we propose is independent of the algorithm used to generate the reachability graph of a model. We use Saturation Unbound due to its well-known efficiency.

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Longo, F., Scarpa, M., Puliafito, A. (2016). WebSPN: A Flexible Tool for the Analysis of Non-Markovian Stochastic Petri Nets. In: Fiondella, L., Puliafito, A. (eds) Principles of Performance and Reliability Modeling and Evaluation. Springer Series in Reliability Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30599-8_10

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