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Discovering Petri Nets: A Personal Journey

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Book cover Carl Adam Petri: Ideas, Personality, Impact

Abstract

Carl Adam Petri pioneered the computer science discipline and is one of the founding fathers of the field of concurrency. He single-handedly started a new subfield of computer science focusing on concurrency. The ideas have been embedded in many other process-modeling notations and are hidden inside many information systems and analysis tools. Petri’s guiding principles state (1) Concurrency should be a starting point for system design and analysis and not added as an afterthought and (2) A formalism should be consistent with the laws of physics and not take any shortcuts at the foundational level. These principles are also relevant for process mining and the broader field of Business Process Management (BPM). Many process-mining techniques use Petri nets or related formalisms. Therefore, it is interesting to relate Petri’s guiding principles to current challenges in a data-driven highly-concurrent world.

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Correspondence to Wil M. P. van der Aalst .

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van der Aalst, W.M.P. (2019). Discovering Petri Nets: A Personal Journey. In: Reisig, W., Rozenberg, G. (eds) Carl Adam Petri: Ideas, Personality, Impact. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96154-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96154-5_1

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