Versatile boxes: a multi-purpose algebra of high-level Petri nets

This paper introduces a model of composable Petri nets, called Versatile Boxes, that has all the high-level features already introduced in the family of the Petri Box Calculus (mainly: data and time representation) as well as a new interruption capability. This allows for defining processes that are able to interrupt their execution at any point, just as a program can raise an exception. By choosing a carefully tuned level of generality, we are able to obtain a model that is much simpler than previous approaches, while still allowing to give the semantics of the usual programming language constructs. We believe that our model has the required characteristics for a very general use, hence its name. On the other hand, its is not very complex and so it should be easy to understand or implement and efficient for verification or simulation purpose.