Advanced Stochastic Petri Net Modeling with the Mercury Scripting Language

Abstract

Formal models are widely used in performance and dependability studies of computational systems. Graphical modeling tools allow users to compose such models with ease, but they complicate the creation of models with a dynamic/complex structure, the hierarchical arrangement of different models, and the automatic execution of models with different parameter configurations. To overcome this problem, we created a scripting language for the Mercury tool that supports the combination of different modeling approaches (e.g., Stochastic Petri Nets and Reliability Block Diagrams) in a single project. In this paper, we focus on the extensions developed to improve the capabilities of Generalized Stochastic Petri net Modeling: substitution transitions, phase-type delays for timed transitions, support for nets with a variable structure, and event-based programming for simulation.