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Software engineers continually strive to develop tools and techniques to manage the complexity that is inherent in software systems. In this article, we argue that intelligent agents and multi-agent systems are just such tools. We begin by reviewing ...

This paper describes a new approach to the production of robust software. We first motivate the approach by explaining why the two major goals of software engineering--correct software and reusable software--are not being addressed well by the current ...

In this paper, I will discuss the conceptual foundation of agentoriented software development by relating the fundamental elements of the agentoriented view to those of other, well established programming paradigms, especially the object-oriented ...

It has previously been claimed that agent technologies facilitate software development by virtue of their high-level abstractions for interactions. We address a more specific characterization and utility.We believe that it is important to distinguish ...

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) introduce a unique software architecture style. MAS developed to date have several common architectural characteristics, even though differences in their design and implementation result in variations in their strengths and ...

In the past, research on agent-oriented software engineering had been widely lacking touch with the world of industrial software development. Recently, a cooperation has been established between the Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) and ...

The agent paradigm can be seen as an extension of the notion of (active) objects by concepts like autonomy, cooperation, and goal-oriented behavior. Mainstream object-oriented modeling techniques do not account for these agentspecific aspects. Therefore,...

Gaining wide acceptance for the use of agents in industry requires both relating it to the nearest antecedent technology (objectoriented software development) and using artifacts to support the development environment throughout the full system ...

This paper describes a methodology that is being developed for designing and building agent-based systems for the domain of production control. In particular, this paper deals with the steps that are involved in identifying the agents and in specifying ...

Due to their autonomy and social behavior, agents will play important roles in future emerging enterprises. They will fill key positions and provide essential capabilities. We propose role modelling as a software engineering technique for specifying, ...

We propose a preliminary methodology for agent-oriented software engineering based on the idea of agent interaction analysis. This approach uses interactions between undetermined agents as the primary component of analysis and design. Agents as a basis ...

The notion of society should play a central role in agent-oriented software engineering as a first-class abstraction around which complex systems can be designed and built as multi-agent systems. We argue that an effective agentoriented methodology ...

A modelling approach based on the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is proposed as a first stage in developing agent based systems. The SSMapproach enables a better conceptualisation of the system being developed, and enables each stake holder to evaluate ...

To solve complex problems, agents work cooperatively with other agents in heterogeneous environments. We are interested in coordinating the local behavior of individual agents to provide an appropriate system-level behavior. The use of intelligent ...

In view of the proliferation and expansion of wide-area open networks such as the intranets and extra-nets, agent technology is attracting greater attention. However, as yet there is well-established and widely used method of developing safe and secure ...

The architecture of a multi-agent system can naturally be viewed as a computational organisation. For this reason, we believe organisational abstractions should play a central role in the analysis and design of such systems. To this end, the concepts of ...

To make verification a manageable part of the system development process, comprehensibility and reusability of properties and proofs is essential. The work reported in this paper contributes formally founded methods that support proof structuring and ...

Researchers have developed various techniques to address MAS problemsolving activities, i.e., agent organization construction, plan generation, task allocation, plan integration, and plan execution. An agentís respective problem solving and coordination ...

Adaptive Agent Oriented Software Architecture (AAOSA) is a new approach to software design based on an agent-oriented architecture. In this approach, agents are considered adaptively communicating modules divided into a "white box" module, which is ...

In this paper, we present an agent platform, called JADE (Java Agent Development Environment), that tries to ease development applications in compliance with the FIPA specifications. Moreover, we describe an extension to JADE original agent model that ...