Software Modeling Technique and its Prototype Tool for Behavior of Multiple Objects Using Extended Place/Transition Nets with Attributed Tokens

Extended Place/transition Net (EPN) [1,2] is a formal modeling language to represent the behavior of software that consists of multiple objects. The objects mean modules, components, or subsystems in this study, and they interact each other to provide expected functionality of the software. EPN enables engineers to construct unambiguous and executable software specifications that can be used for systematic skeleton code and test case generation. However, in software modeling using EPN, objects need to be defined individually even if they have the same behavior, which causes an increase in model size. A large model that includes redundant definitions often leads to additional cost for design, implementation, test, and maintenance, due to its poor readability.