Bibliography

Modeling Systems of Systems as Nested Actor Systems Based on Petri Nets

Matthias Wester-Ebbinghaus, Daniel Moldt, and Simon Adameit.
Modeling systems of systems as nested actor systems based on Petri nets.
In Gregor Engels, Dimitris Karagiannis, and Heinrich Mayr, editors, Modellierung 2010, volume 161 of Lecture Notes in Informatics, pages 67-82. Gesellschaft für Informatik E.V., 2010.

Modern software systems are frequently characterized as systems of systems. Agent-orientation as a software engineering paradigm exhibits a high degree of qualification for addressing many of the accompanying challenges. However, systems of systems demand for means of hierarchical/recursive decomposition that are not inherently rooted in the agent-oriented paradigm. We present a model that still relies on the actor metaphor, but shifts the focus to collective agency. We propose a universal model of a system unit that both embeds system actors and is itself embedded as a collective system actor in surrounding system units. Consequently, we can apply our model of a system unit at arbitrary levels of a system of systems and compose the overall system by means of nested actor hierarchies. (High Level) Petri nets as our modeling technique supply precise operational semantics for the functioning of these kind of systems. In addition, we offer abstraction mechanisms that allow for rather high-level or low-level views and smooth transitions between them.

BibTeX

@inProceedings{Wester+10a,
  author={Wester-Ebbinghaus, Matthias and Moldt, Daniel and Adameit, Simon},
  title={Modeling Systems of Systems as Nested Actor Systems Based on {P}etri Nets},
  abstract={Modern software systems are frequently characterized as
                  systems of systems. Agent-orientation as a software
                  engineering paradigm exhibits a high degree of
                  qualification for addressing many of the
                  accompanying challenges. However, systems of systems
                  demand for means of hierarchical/recursive
                  decomposition that are not inherently rooted in the
                  agent-oriented paradigm. We present a model that
                  still relies on the actor metaphor, but shifts the
                  focus to collective agency. We propose a universal
                  model of a system unit that both embeds system
                  actors and is itself embedded as a collective system
                  actor in surrounding system units. Consequently, we
                  can apply our model of a system unit at arbitrary
                  levels of a system of systems and compose the
                  overall system by means of nested actor
                  hierarchies. (High Level) Petri nets as our modeling
                  technique supply precise operational semantics for
                  the functioning of these kind of systems. In
                  addition, we offer abstraction mechanisms that allow
                  for rather high-level or low-level views and smooth
                  transitions between them.},
  booktitle={Modellierung 2010},
  editor={Engels, Gregor and Karagiannis, Dimitris and Mayr, Heinrich},
  publisher={Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Informatik E.V.},
  series={Lecture Notes in Informatics},
  volume={161},
  pages={67--82},
  year={2010}
}