QPNs are suitable for modelling synchronisation and concurrency situations as well as sharing of resources which appear in most distributed systems. The great benefit is that a user is not forced to model queues by ordinary (CGS)PN elements thus simplifying the description of systems. Timed places can be viewed as simple parametrisable subnets of a hierarchically specified model.
QPN-Tool offers a convenient graphical user interface. The automatic local unfolding of transitions enables also unexperienced users to get quickly acquainted with the QPN model world. The tool also offers many algorithms for efficient qualitative and quantitative analysis of QPN models.
Future developments are directed to extend this set of analysis algorithms towards transient analysis, simulation and furthermore to integrate hierarchical description and analysis techniques as proposed in [5].