(Toward) Discrete-event simulation of reflective Petri nets

The design of dynamic, adaptable discrete-event systems calls for adequate modeling formalisms and tools in order to manage possible changes occurring during system's lifecycle. A common approach is to pollute the design with details not concerning the current system behavior, rather its evolution. That hampers analysis, reuse and maintenance in general. A Petri net-based reflective model (based on classical Petri nets) was recently proposed to support dynamic discrete-event system's design, and was applied to dynamic workflow's management. Behind there is the idea that keeping functional aspects separated from evolutionary ones, and applying evolution to the (current) system only when necessary, results in a clean formal model for dynamic systems. This model preserves the ability of verifying properties typical of classical Petri nets. As a first step toward the implementation (in the short time) of a discrete-event simulator, Reflective Petri nets are provided in this paper with a semantics defined in terms of labeled state-transitions.