Tracing and Reversing the Run of Software Systems Implemented by Petri Nets

Object Oriented Petri Nets, debugging, tracing, reverse debugging, requirements validation

Application run tracing and application interactive debugging are integral part of the software systems development process. In many cases, the possibility to execute reverse steps of the system run would make debugging easier and quicker due to examination of the system state before it got into the wrong or disabled state. Currently, techniques of reversing the system run are not widespread, but there are experimental implementations. Nevertheless, these solutions increase overhead of the application run due to the logging of the information needed to restore previous states. Moreover, many of them increase overhead in a significant way. This article focuses on the possibility of reversing the run of systems whose behavior is described by Petri nets. The work follows the methodology of designing and validating system requirements using functional models that combine formal notation with objects of production environment and can be used as a full-fledged application. Due to the nature of Petri Nets formalisms, it is possible to define reverse operations to reduce the overhead of application run.