In: IEEE Computer Soc. Press, Proc. of 6th International Workshop on Petri Nets and Performance Models - PNPM'95, Durham, N. Carolina, USA, pages 221-230. 1995.
Abstract: Stochastic Petri nets (SPNs) have emerged over the years as a favored approach for performance and dependability modeling and evaluation. Their usual utilization assumes that systems specification and design do not evolve, in opposition to real-life. This paper is aimed at a preliminary exploration of how to take advantage of the existing body of results on SPNs for modeling the evolution of computer systems, i.e. to model non-stationary stochastic processes. It focuses on dependability evolutions which result from successive releases.