Constructs for prototyping information systems with object Petri nets

OASIS (Open and Active System Information Specification) is a language for the specification of object-oriented conceptual models. Object Petri nets (OPNs) support a full integration of object-oriented concepts into Petri nets. We propose a way to represent the object-oriented concepts used in the OASIS language with OPNs as a suitable semantic model for validating software specifications. We have developed a basic execution model for OASIS specifications, including its main features. Communication aspects between objects are taken into account in our proposal (triggering mechanism and shared events). We consider: event preconditions reducing the worlds to be reached, attribute valuations changing the states of objects, the creation and deletion of objects, and life-cycles of objects. OPNs are an appropriate semantic foundation for building a concurrent software engineering environment for distributed computation because they allow a natural representation of concurrence. We show how the object-oriented concepts of an OASIS specification are represented in OPNs.