Model Driven Development of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Using Colored Petri Nets

Abstract. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is achieving widespread acceptance in a variety of enterprise systems, due to its inherent flexibility and interoperability, improving upon the more tradition and less supportable “stovepipe” approach. The high degree of concurrency and both synchronous and asynchronous communications inherent in SOA makes it a good candidate for a Petri Nets based model driven development (MDD). Such an approach, with its underlying verification and validation implications, becomes more crucial in mission-critical applications, such as those with defense implications. This paper reports on our experience with using Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) for model driven development and quality assessment of a defense-targeted serviceoriented software architecture. We identify features of CPN that have resulted in ease of adoption as a modeling tool in our present setting. Preliminary results are provided which support the use of CPNs as a basis for model driven software development, and verification and validation (V&V) for quality assurance of highly concurrent and mission-critical SOAs.