In: Petri Net Technology for Communication-Based Systems, pages 363-382. Volume 2472 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Hartmut Ehrig, Wolfgang Reisig, Grzegorz Rozenberg and Herbert Weber (Eds.) --- Springer-Verlag, November 2003.
Abstract: The paper presents the Electronic Tool Integration platform (ETI), a community platform designed for project-oriented, domainspecific, public or private interactive experimentation with heterogeneous tools. ETI managers, developers, and users are assisted by an advanced, personalized Online Service guiding experimentation, coordination and simple browsing of the available tool repository according to their degree of experience. This enables even newcomers to master the wealth of existing tools in a short time span, and to identify the most appropriate collection of tools to solve their own application-specific tasks. Concepts and current realization are illustrated along a concrete instantiation: the ETI community associated with the International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT). The ETI technology is application-independent, and we are convinced that it can offer a useful service to thematic communities like the Petri net tool developers and users by means of its underlying interoperability platform. Conversely, we envisage that some tools, initially located in the ETI repository for online experimentation will eventually migrate into the algorithmic kernel of the platform, as means e.g. for generalizing the model for execution.