Proving correctness of distributed algorithms using high-level Petri nets-a case study

We argue that high-level Petri nets are well suited for the representation of distributed algorithms as well as for correctness proofs. To this end, we provide a simple definition of high-level Petri nets, a way to formulate message passing algorithms in this notion, a temporal logic style language for the formulation of properties, and a proof technique which combines techniques from Petri net theory and from temporal logic. As a nontrivial case study we present a variant of Raymond's (1989) message passing mutual exclusion algorithm that works on arbitrary connected networks.