A Heuristic Method of Detecting Data Inconsistency Based on Petri Nets

Petri nets are used to detect the errors of data inconsistency in concurrent systems. The detection methods usually apply a breadth-first or depth-first search to the reachability graphs of Petri nets. However, they spend too much space and time due to the blind search strategy. In this paper, we propose a heuristic method that can save lots of space and time. First we define structural data inconsistency of Petri nets which is more likely to cause the errors of data inconsistency. Then, in order to detect the errors as fast as possible, a heuristic function is proposed to guide the construction of a reachability graph. Furthermore, we propose a detection algorithm and develop a tool. Our experiments illustrate the advantage and effectiveness of our method.