Compositionality of Systems and Partially Ordered Runs

Abstract

In the late 1970s, C.A. Petri introduced partially ordered event occurrences (runs), then called \emph{processes}, as the appropriate model to describe the individual evolutions of distributed systems. Here, we present a unified framework for handling Petri nets and their runs, specifically to compose and decompose them. It is shown that, for nets $M$ and $N$, the set of runs of the composed net $M\bullet N$ equals the composition of the runs of $M$ and $N$.

15 pages, 16 figures, submitted to PETRI NETS 2026