Abstract
From a software engineering perspective, agent systems are a spe-cialization of object-oriented (OO) systems, in which individual objects have their own threads of control and their own goals or sense of purpose. Engineer-ing such systems is most naturally approached as an extension of object-oriented systems engineering. In particular, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) can be naturally extended to support the distinctive requirements of multi-agent systems. One such requirement results from the increasing emphasis on the cor-respondence between multi-agent systems and social systems. Sociological analogies are proving fruitful models for agent-oriented constructions, while so-ciologists increasingly use agents as a modeling tool for studying social sys-tems. We combine several existing organizational models for agents, including AALAADIN, dependency theory, interaction protocols, and holonics, in a general theoretical framework, and show how UML can be applied and extended to capture constructions in that framework.
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Van Dyke Parunak, H., Odell, J.J. (2002). Representing Social Structures in UML. In: Wooldridge, M.J., Weiß, G., Ciancarini, P. (eds) Agent-Oriented Software Engineering II. AOSE 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2222. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-70657-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-70657-7_1
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