Modeling concurrent systems: Actors, nets, and the problem of abstraction and composition -- Temporal uncertainty and fuzzy-timing high-level Petri nets -- Compositionality in state space verification methods -- On liveness and controlled siphons in Petri nets -- Behavioural and structural composition rules preserving liveness by synchronization for colored FIFO nets -- High level synthesis of synchronous parallel controllers -- Non sequential semantics for contextual P/T nets -- The PSR methodology: Integrating hardware and software models -- Designing and verifying a communications gateway using coloured Petri nets and design/CPN™ -- Expected impulse rewards in Markov regenerative stochastic Petri nets -- Asynchronous composition of high level Petri Nets: A quantitative approach -- A formal definition of hierarchical predicate transition nets -- Reduced state space representation for unbounded vector state spaces -- Modelling and analysis of distributed program execution in BETA using coloured Petri Nets -- Reachability analysis based on structured representations -- Arc-typed Petri Nets -- The SEA Language for system engineering and animation -- A new iterative numerical solution algorithm for a class of stochastic Petri Nets -- A structural approach for the analysis of Petri Nets by reduced unfoldings -- An O(S × T)-algorithm to verify if a net is regular -- The consistent use of names and polymorphism in the definition of Object Petri Nets -- Designing a security system by means of Coloured Petri Nets -- Modeling and analysing DART systems through high-level Petri nets -- {SC}*ECS: A class of modular and hierarchical cooperating systems -- Behavioural equivalence for infinite systems — Partially decidable! -- Topological aspects of traces -- Asynchronous control device design by net model behavior simulation -- Covering step graph -- Performance analysis of a connection management scheme in IWU interconnecting LANs across ATM networks.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, held in Osaka, Japan, in June 1996. The 26 revised full papers included in the book together with three invited presentations were selected from a total of 78 submissions. The book addresses the current theoretical and applicational aspects of the various types of Petri Nets and competently reflects the state of the art in the area.