Published at PETRI NETS 2026
Our team has a new conference paper out at PETRI NETS 2026 — the International Conference on Applications and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency. The paper is titled “Netgrif Platform: A Tool for Executable Models of Object-Centric Processes in Petriflow Language,” and it’s published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS, volume 16567).
It’s authored by Gabriel Juhás, Juraj Mažári, Tomáš Kováčik, Milan Mladoniczky and Matej Chvostek, and it lands in the same week we were highlighted in a broader research manifesto on object-centric process management. If you missed that one, it’s worth reading alongside this — see the manifesto post on the blog.
What the paper says
The paper starts from a problem most people who build enterprise software know well: traditional process modelling suffers from a separation between data structures, business logic, and the presentation layer. Those three layers usually live in different tools, different files, and different mental models — and keeping them in sync is where a lot of the pain comes from.
The Netgrif Platform is introduced as an application development platform for modelling and executing object-centric processes using the Petriflow language, that integrates those three layers into a single human-readable and executable model. By providing this vertical integration, the platform enables rapid development of business-aligned processes and complex applications.
One model, three layers
The core idea is vertical integration. Instead of a process diagram in one place, a data schema in another, and frontend forms in a third, a Petriflow model captures the process, the data, and the UI together — in one artefact that is both readable by a human and directly executable by the platform.
This is the object-centric idea in practice: work is modelled around interconnected objects rather than isolated cases, and the model that describes an application is the application. There’s no translation step where intent gets lost between the spec and the running system.
From the abstract
“…integrates these three layers into a single human-readable and executable model.”
Data, business logic, and presentation — no longer scattered across separate tools, but unified in Petriflow.
Why it matters
Having a peer-reviewed paper at PETRI NETS — the field’s central conference for Petri net theory and applications — puts the Netgrif Platform on record as a real, executable tool, not just a concept. It complements the recognition from the recent object-centric process management manifesto, which highlighted Petriflow as one of only two working process engines in the space.
Together, the two tell a consistent story: the academic world is formalising the object-centric paradigm, and Netgrif already has a running implementation of it. The same vertical integration that the paper describes is also what makes the platform AI-native — when process, data, and UI live in one model, an AI can reason about a whole application at once instead of stitching it together across layers.
The work was funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V04-00493.
Read it yourself
- Netgrif Platform: A Tool for Executable Models of Object-Centric Processes in Petriflow Language — PETRI NETS 2026 (Springer)
- The broader picture: our post on the object-centric process management manifesto
- Explore Petriflow on github.com/netgrif — the language is open-source
Questions about the platform or object-centric processes? Reach out on LinkedIn — happy to talk through any part of it.
See the platform from the paper in action
Open the Builder, describe a process, and watch Petriflow generate a full, executable app — the same vertical integration of data, logic and UI described in the paper.