GF_LL_PN2000_june_2000

Frey, G.; Litz, L.:
XML Based Interchange Format for Petri Nets-A Control Engineers Point of View.
Meeting on XML/SGML based Interchange Formats for Petri Nets, International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, Aarhus, Denmark, June, 2000. http://www.daimi.au.dk/pn2000/Interchange/position.html.

The idea of an interchange format for Petri nets is not new. However recently it got a new boost due to the development of other interchange formats based on the Extended Markup Language (XML). XML allows the specification of specialized markup languages for the convenient exchange of information in a specific area of research or business. Examples of recent markup languages based on XML are the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) the Chemical Markup Language (CML) or the Astronomical Instrument Markup Language (AIML) the latter developed at NASA to command and control astronomical instruments. XML seems to have the power to become a mayor means for the exchange of information in the near future just as its "little brother" HTML changed the way we exchange information in the past five years.
The success of internet based technology and the growing need for the exchange of technical information has also reached the domain of control engineering. In this position paper we want to illustrate the use of Petri nets in control engineering and explain how an interchange format could be used in this area. From this we derive some issues that should be addressed in the discussion of an Petri net interchange format. For the interested reader we append the definition of the Signal Interpreted Petri Net we use for the design of logic controllers.