Ready.
The claimed-contributions of copycat82 had already been published by others. In the very rare instances where some trivial variation is attempted (or, advertised), the suggested content is missing and/or the consequences are not handled. Such illusions (false claims) are only restating the research ideas/questions that had been published by others. No original questions, no original answers. Only a translation/merger (cut-and-paste) of a very few papers, which has resulted in a subset of some single papers - when the false claims are omitted.
As a result of its unoriginality, all of the ideas in copycat82, are already available, by only reading the original sources. Therefore, I only point at the previous publications, and then, describe copycat82's committed errors, including its self-contradictions, which scream, at the seams.
In copycat82, there are no proofs whatsoever. That is strange, for a Ph.D. If it claims any contribution, we would expect some proofs of correct-operation for it, but copycat82 avoids any. In fact, I keep proving its faultiness, in a variety of ways - when the cut-and-paste monster, copycat82, leads to absurdity. This page specializes for another type of proof: I prove that copycat82 plagiarizes. An overview of my proof is available.
Macro E-nets existed since 1973. Da80 discusses E-nets, too. Very precisely, these are sufficient to map the formal structure, between E-nets, and copycat82. Whenever (if) there is (a claim of) the slightest difference, copycat82 is not functional. It is only an attempt at make-up, but fails.
An E-net is a seven-tuple in three-pieces: (E, M0, (xi, Psi)).
A convenience, in tracking plagiarism, is that, copycat82 turns out to be in the L, P, R, A order - interleaved, with the rest of E-nets, as plagiarized from Da80, or NN73. That is, we find the camouflage, as a jerkin, with which, it has been attempted to cover up the existence of E-nets. The exact fit to E-nets is strikingly noticeable, though. Features, and restrictions show through.
| E-nets | copycat82/83 |
|---|---|
| L | A location may contain a token. At most, a single token, at a time. Plagiarized in section 3.2.1. as copycat82's jerkin to E-nets |
| xi | A token, may have token-attributes with it, employed as a vector (record) with
attributes (fields). The xi, is similar, but global. Plagiarized in section 3.2.2. as copycat82's jerkin to E-nets |
| P | Tokens arrive/exit through the peripheral locations. Plagiarized in section 3.2.3. (earlier part) as copycat82's jerkin to E-nets |
| Psi | Each (peripheral) resolution location is associated with a resolution procedure. Plagiarized in section 3.2.3. (later part) as copycat82's jerkin to E-nets |
| R | A resolution location is for a value, to resolve conflicts.(See Da80:IV.E,too) Plagiarized in section 3.2.4. as copycat82's jerkin to E-nets |
| global model | E-nets formalism, and next, Da80 section "V. Global Model" Plagiarized in section 3.2.5. as copycat82's jerkin to E-nets |
| A | An E-net transition is/represents activity. As soon as it is (fully)
enabled, it starts, i.e: there is no wait-before-firing time, separate from the
transition-time. Plagiarized in section 3.2.6. as copycat82's jerkin to E-nets |
Next, we will discuss these more thoroughly, to pinpoint the plagiarism, paragraph-by-paragraph.
Except the false-claim of abstract-data-types (ADTs), anything and everything in copycat82 exactly corresponds to the E-nets formal structure - but with errors.
The case with an ADT is strange. If there is anything new, where is it discussed? If nothing is new, why bother mention it? As such, it is only a false claim, in copycat82. But, let's reflect about those ADTs, ourselves, and again, map/locate them with the E-nets formalism, albeit as an unresolved duality - as it is.
When an E-net is visually presented, how it corresponds to its formal-presentation, is easily noticeable. No confusion with that. Then, it is trivial to write those listings, within the figures (imitative of SARA), as copycat82 does. It is both trivial, and absurd to unbundle the token-attributes, as data-item boxes, and even further to suggest (although itself avoids), drawing "data-type" boxes, similarly. These all have their problems, without any new utility, in copycat82 - not to mention the graph clutter/crowdedness.
e.g: A token at a location, may have twelve attributes. NN73 renders it as a single point (location), and the process is obvious. It would be only clutter, if, as with copycat82, next to that single location, you draw twelve boxes, parallel to the token path, that points between the source and destination. This is what it is, especially, because it is a message-based networked/distributed system. i.e: Adopting a representation as "memory cells" is a bit of, mismatch, especially when no such extra purpose, as VD78 prefers (the Keller/Karp paradigm) is employed, either. See article similarity semantics?!?
Although copycat82 appears to claim (implicitly), the ability to verify its subnets separately, in fact, it is only true for VD78 subnets. Therefore, copycat82 is false, in its (implicit) claim of separately-verifiable subnets. Furthermore, in fact, even importing that feature from VD78 would have been trivial, too. It is pathetic that copycat82 does not refer to the subnet-restrictions, and the proof in VD78 (or, in Valette's PhD, in 1976). It appears, copycat82 did not want to transcribe (or cite) everything, and next, it was faulty, because it had discarded some essential points of the VD78 methodology.
Formally, copycat82 is E-nets. In figures, it imitates SARA. Next, when it is time to verify/test the model, copycat82 attempts to verify, as if it were VD78, with a simple loop/recursion. i.e: Attempts to verify, as if those were separate subnets, but without the necessities of isolation being observed, first.
i.e: When you ask: "Could copycat82 verify them separately?" the answer is "No." This entails, by contraposition, that VD78 is relevant/implied, because it is VD78 that lists a/the set of restrictions to make such a reduction correct, and publishes its proof.
Only expanding the entrance/exit macros certainly does not suffice. Mostly irrelevant. That is no contribution beyond VD78, any way - as far as, a bottleneck has to be observed at entrance/exit. Those copycat82 entrance/exit macros are trivial, expensive, and quirky/faulty.
We can easily map a few elements between the E-nets and VD78 formalisms, but mostly they study different strategies. This means, they could contribute to each other, if a minimum of care is observed. But, at all such points, the copycat82 fails. It steadily makes the wrong choices. You could always correct them, yourself. But the result is trivially, then, either E-nets, or VD78.
The E-net and VD78 mappability (to some extent), is not such a strange thing, because, all those (prior art) papers (NN73, VD78, etc.) have some similar start points (concurrency literature, Petri nets), but each contribute their own, too. E-nets study, mainly, the modeling issues, and they simulate deterministically. VD78 swims at the other side of the river, mostly - with a three-levels strategy.
And next, some of these contributions are very easily portable to other net-formalisms, whereas some improvements are very specific to that (prior-art) paper, in question. For example, the net-macros (NN73), for E-nets, are very easily portable to many other net formalisms, exactly (e.g. to FSA, Petri nets, UCLA graphs, etc.)
Similarly, both strategies for reducing subnets are easy. That is, both the VD78 (beforehand, with its criteria), and/or the SARA/UCLA (afterwards, with its listed reduction heuristics) strategies, are usable with E-nets, and probably elsewhere, too. That way, a subnet, is reduced as a(n opaque) T-transition. This is a valuable improvement, very especially if a nondeterministic reachability-test is intended, because reducing subnets, reduces the marking-space complexity/dimensionality.
With deterministic test/simulation, it is again valuable, even if not necessary, as it helps reduce the load on rote memory, and/or help reduce documentation-need, when the subnet is virtually reduced to a simple element - instead of "a macro, with such and such a semantics that must be remembered."
NN73 (p.724), refers to a "transition procedure involving statistical terms", as an alternative to macros, but they do not discuss it further. Such a statistical-modeling idea, fits the E-nets preference to deterministically simulate, better, than the VD78 atomization. In a simulation study, with statistically-modeled/summarized elements, each run could be a(n experimental) statistical sampling, of the (probabilistic) behavior of the net. Then, you may run, for example, 100 rounds of the experiment, and process the resulting data with ANOVA, linear regression, etc.
You may read further about these, at the page about prior art. After reading it, copycat82 is obvious, not to have contributed anything. i.e: All the questions, and answers, it only republishes. As a proof, this page pinpoints the plagiarism, whereas that page suggests the non-contribution of copycat82, by contra-position: That is, given that literature, what is the claim of copycat82, beyond that? The answer is: nothing. This nullifies any claims of copycat82.
In summary, copycat82 only merges the Petri net extensions of two preceding research papers (NN73 and VD78), with a very little make-up (imitative of SARA (UCLA graphs), visually, and imitative of Da80 (again, E-nets), formally). The start-up may have been from the Peterson (1977) tutorial and/or Danthine's (1980), if not from something similar. But then, when even the merged and the make-up leads to obvious faults and unhandled consequences, even the basic advantages of the Petri nets can get lost.
It is patch by patch: An example may work, another may not. It depends on whether both (or, all) of the source papers would express it, the same way. If not, there is the self-contradiction in copycat82, because it is only a cut-and-pasted text. For example, if you need both a transition procedure (to modify resources), and a resolution procedure, you cannot present that node visually. (E-nets has both, SARA has a single node, where it does both jobs.)
In copycat82, except for Da80, the plagiarism is not one of totally not-mentioning the references. Three of the references (Peterson's, E-nets, and SARA) were quite well-known papers, anyway. In copycat82, they are cited as part of the literature overview, but next, they are "forgotten." Never again, at any relevant point, could you ever read, in copycat82, that some idea is actually re-published from somewhere else. You need to sort and reference, and the net result is that, nothing else is left - except some false claims, and a lot of errors in the examples. That is very unsuggestive of a Ph.D. work.
Unoriginal. So much so that, at times, we can even tell the copying step-by-step by comparing the figures, and/or something that does not make sense with the arbitraryrenaming in copycat82 starts to make sense when you notice the same pattern in the original paper and read the original explanation for it.
Although copycat82 claims to be "A method for the design ... and analysis of distributed software systems ...," itself has a lot of errors in its examples, and the presented method is fault-prone. The granting of a Ph.D. degree to such a work, is especially horrifying, both materially, and academically. The lethal and/or material disasters lurk behind. Think of an earthquake-emergency system, or maybe a nuclear reactor (with a few computers working for it), and/or an aeroplane Who can rely on some critical software if verified by that copycat82 method or person, and/or by those professors who granted such a Ph.D.?
Even if it were not in a lethal subject, the research enterprise is still valued by the humanity, usually, as it improves our lives, whether directly, or indirectly. Why grant a research-implying degree to some cut-and-paste which cannot manage its seams, and the plagiarizing is screaming its existence? It is essentially, buried at its merger. The person with such a lack-of-achievement, yet with such an over-ambition, grabbing a degree that he does not deserve, mayyy only go on like that, in the later decades - but now, with a "Ph.D. degree," as a false witness.
In presence of all those un-referenced material, if you would tell me it is "computer science basics" and need not be cited, I would ask you "What is left then? The content of those papers already cover this." A full-cover of the content by the preceding literature, with whatever explanation/excuse, would still be unoriginality, and need not be granted a Ph.D. And then the errors are extra extra. If that is computer science, how does that person even carry a B.S. degree in computer science?
Refuting the copycat82's any claims-of-novelty, any contribution, at all, item by item, throughout its abstract.
Here is the list of claims from the abstract of the copycat82:
See: dsws
We understand the word structure as the graph that shows all the possible sequences and branchings of events and conditions, in event-modeling. The term behavior is understood, as the run-time activity, or the token-flow, for these Petri-nets based event-modeling systems.
Peterson (1977) tutorial, on its first page, an analogy/insight is stated: "The Petri net graph models the static properties of a system, much as a flowchart represents the static properties of a computer program."
Relevant: the data: xi from E-nets, etc.).
At VD78, the macro-facility is standardized to be a macro-transition with only one input place and one output place. and cite a paper for a proof correct operation.
Relevant: (the P in E-nets, psi in E-nets, and R in E-nets).
it differentiates among macros as being thick rectangles, not thin ones.
And, indeed, except such very few figures where it tries to show how the macros could be implemented with the ordinary Petri nets, it does not use any ordinary transitions in the examples. and transitions with theThe instantaneous, in that case.the figure is an example of their own, and their graphs does not care for a transiA Bsimply does not work. has its E-net primitives, the V&D has predicate, shown by rhombus,
In general, if not always, this is not true for copycat82. For two important reasons, at least.
It requires an E-nets-like interpreter to do the reachability analysis. i.e: E-nets, but neglects time/data, runs non-deterministically.a Petri net, or E-net? wait vs. dump, etc., etc.
partial-firing: macro vs. subnet.
Where is it? There is only a mutual-exclsusion algorithm, from a CACM article, which is converted to the representation suggested by the copycat82. It takes quite a bit of listing of the errors (which I do in another page). And it is deadlocked. It cannot be the failure of the algorithm, most possibly; it is very obvious, and even such deadlocks are very glaringly there. Not to mention that, this is the example which was supposed to demonstrate operations of all those unexplained abstract-data-types, etc. How do they interact with Petri nets really? It is "The End" but the reader leaves the pages with this question in one's mind - among the others.