Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems: The Agent-Oriented Software Engineering Handbook

518 Pages·2004·11.9 MB·English

by  Federico Bergenti

METHODOLOGIES AND
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
FOR AGENT SYSTEMS
The Agent-Oriented
Software Engineering Handbook
MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS,
ARTIFICIAL SOCIETIES, AND
SIMULATED ORGANIZATIONS
International Book Series
Series Editor: Gerhard Weiss,Technische Universität München
Editorial Board:
Kathleen M. Carley, Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA
Yves Demazeau, CNRS Laboratoire LEIBNIZ, France
Ed Durfee, University of Michigan, USA
Les Gasser, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA
Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey, United Kingdom
Michael Huhns, University of South Carolina, SC, USA
Nick Jennings, University of Southampton, UK
Victor Lesser, University of Massachusetts, MA, USA
Katia Sycara, Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA
Michael Wooldridge, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
Books in the Series:
CONFLICTING AGENTS: Conflict Management in Multi-Agent Systems, edited by
Catherine Tessier,Laurent Chaudron and Heinz-Jürgen Müller, ISBN: 0-7923-7210-7
SOCIAL ORDER IN MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS, edited by Rosaria Conte and
Chrysanthos Dellarocas, ISBN: 0-7923-7450-9
SOCIALLY INTELLIGENT AGENTS: Creating Relationships with Computers and
Robots, edited by Kerstin Dautenhahn, Alan H. Bond, Lola Cañamero and Bruce Edmonds,
ISBN: 1-4020-7057-8
CONCEPTUAL MODELLING OF MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS: The CoMoMAS
Engineering Environment, by Norbert Glaser, ISBN: 1-4020-7061-6
GAME THEORY AND DECISION THEORY IN AGENT-BASED SYSTEMS, edited by
Simon Parsons, Piotr Gmytrasiewicz, Michael Wooldridge, ISBN: 1-4020-7115-9
REPUTATION IN ARTIFICIAL SOCIETIES: Social Beliefs for Social Order, by Rosaria
Conte, Mario Paolucci, ISBN: 1-4020-7186-8
AGENTAUTONOMY, edited by Henry Hexmoor, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Rino Falcone,
ISBN: 1-4020-7402-6
AGENT SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK, edited by Yiming Ye, Elizabeth
Churchill, ISBN: 1-4020-7404-2
DISTRIBUTED SENSOR NETWORKS, edited by Victor Lesser, Charles L. Ortiz, Jr.,
Milind Tambe, ISBN: 1-4020-7499-9
AN APPLICATION SCIENCE FOR MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS, edited by Thomas A.
Wagner, ISBN: 1-4020-7867-6
METHODOLOGIES AND
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
FOR AGENT SYSTEMS
The Agent-Oriented
Software Engineering Handbook
Edited by
Federico Bergenti
Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy
Marie-Pierre Gleizes
Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse
(CNRS – INP – UPS), France
Franco Zambonelli
Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK,BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW
eBookISBN: 1-4020-8058-1
Print ISBN: 1-4020-8057-3
©2004 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.
Print ©2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers
Boston
All rights reserved
No part of this eBook maybe reproducedor transmitted inanyform or byanymeans,electronic,
mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without written consent from the Publisher
Created in the United States of America
Visit Springer's eBookstore at: http://www.ebooks.kluweronline.com
and the Springer Global Website Online at: http://www.springeronline.com
Contents
Contributing Authors xi
Foreword xxi
Introduction xxvii
Part I Concepts and Abstractions of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
Introduction 3
1
Agent-Based Abstractions for Software Development 5
Munindar P. Singh
1. Introduction 5
2. A Brief History of Software Development 7
3. Agents and Multiagent Systems 9
4. Agent-Based Software Development 13
5. Critical Directions 16
6. Conclusions 17
2
On the Use of Agents as Components of Software Systems 19
Federico Bergenti and Michael N. Huhns
1. Introduction 19
2. Software Agents vs. Software Components 20
3. Semantically Reusing Agents and Components 25
4. Discussion 30
3
A Survey on Agent-Oriented Oriented Software Engineering Research 33
Jorge J. Gómez-Sanz, Marie-Pierre Gervais and Gerhard Weiss
1. Introduction 33
2. Analysis 35
3. Design 41
4. Implementation 55
5. Testing 57
vi Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems
6. More Information 61
7. Conclusions 61
Part II Methodologies for Agent-Based Systems Development
Introduction 65
4
The Gaia Methodology 69
Luca Cernuzzi, Thomas Juan, Leon Sterling and Franco Zambonelli
1. Introduction 69
2. Gaia in a Nutshell 70
3. Gaia v.2 75
4. The ROADMAP Methodology 79
5. Extending Gaia with AUML 84
6. Open Issues 87
7. Conclusions 87
5
The Tropos Methodology 89
Paolo Giorgini, Manuel Kolp, John Mylopoulos and Marco Pistore
1. Introduction 89
2. Overview 90
3. Formal Tropos 94
4. Socially-Based MAS Architectures 98
5. Goal Models 102
6. Conclusions 105
6
The MaSE Methodology 107
Scott A. DeLoach
1. Introduction 107
2. Methodology 108
3. Analysis Phase 108
4. Design Phase 117
5. agentTool 122
6. Applications 124
7. Comparison with other Methodologies 124
7
A Comparative Evaluation of Agent-Oriented Methodologies 127
Arnon Sturm and Onn Shehory
1. Introduction 127
2. The Evaluation Framework 129
3. Evaluating Gaia 134
4. Evaluating Tropos 138
5. Evaluating MaSE 143
6. Summary and Conclusion 147
Contents vii
Part III Special-Purpose Methodologies
Introduction 153
8
The ADELFE Methodology 157
Gauthier Picard and Marie-Pierre Gleizes
1. Introduction 157
2. ADELFE Methodology Overview 158
3. Preliminary Requirements 161
4. Final Requirements 161
5. Analysis 163
6. Design 165
7. ADELFE Tools 172
8. Comparison with other Methodologies 173
9. Conclusion 174
9
The MESSAGE Methodology 177
Giovanni Caire, Wim Coulier, Francisco Garijo, Jorge Gómez-Sanz, JuanPavón, Paul
Kearney and Philippe Massonet
1. Introduction 177
2. The MESSAGE Methodology 178
3. Analysis/Design TravelAgent Case-Study 183
4. Considerations on Low-Level Design 191
5. Evaluation of MESSAGE 193
6. Conclusions 194
10
The SADDE Methodology 195
Carles Sierra, Jordi Sabater, Jaume Agusti and Pere Garcia
1. Introduction 195
2. The SADDE Methodology 196
3. A Case Study: The Electricity Market 199
4. Step1: The EBM 199
5. Step2: The Electronic Institution 203
6. Step 3: The ABM 206
7. Step 4: Multiagent System 210
8. Cycle P4 through Evolutionary Computing 210
9. Conclusions 214
11
The Prometheus Methodology 217
Michael Winikoff and Lin Padgham
1. Introduction 217
2. System Specification 220
3. Architectural Design 222
4. Detailed Design 226
5. Tool Support 228
viii Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems
6. Experiences with Using Prometheus 230
7. Related Work 231
8. Future Work 234
Part IV Tools and Infrastructures for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
12
The AUML Approach 237
Marc-Philippe Huget, James Odell and Bernhard Bauer
1. Introduction 237
2. Agent UML Purpose 238
3. Current Work in Agent UML 239
4. Future Directions in Agent UML 252
5. Conclusion 256
13
FIPA-Compliant Agent Infrastructures 259
Fabio Bellifemine and Agostino Poggi
1. Introduction 259
2. FIPA 260
3. FIPA-Compliant Agent Infrastructures 262
4. JADE 264
5. Conclusions 272
14
Coordination Infrastructures in the Engineering of Multiagent Systems 273
Andrea Omicini, Sascha Ossowski and Alessandro Ricci
1. Introduction 273
2. Coordination in MAS 274
3. Infrastructures for MAS Engineering 278
4. Modelling Coordination Infrastructures with Activity Theory 283
5. Engineering MAS with Coordination Infrastructures 290
6. An Example of a Coordination Infrastructure 293
7. Discussion 295
Part V Non Traditional Approaches to Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
Introduction 299
15
Engineering Amorphous Computing Systems 303
Radhika Nagpal and Marco Mamei
1. Introduction 303
2. The Amorphous Computing Model 305
3. Developmental Biology as an Inspiration 305
4. Towards Programming Languages 309
5. Pervasive Computing 315
Contents ix
16
Making Self-Organising Adaptive Multiagent Systems Work 321
Jean-Pierre Georgé, Bruce Edmonds and Pierre Glize
1. Introduction 321
2. Characterization of Emergence in Synthetic Systems 325
3. An Example of a MAS Technology using Emergence 327
4. Flood Forecast by Cooperative Self-Organizing Agents 331
5. Software Engineering Requirements for Self-Organizing MAS 337
6. Conclusion 340
17
Engineering Swarming Systems 341
H. Van Dyke Parunak and Sven A. Brueckner
1. What is Swarming? 341
2. Where would You Want to Use Swarming? 349
3. Why does Swarming Work? 353
4. How can We Apply these Principles in Engineered Systems? 364
5. Conclusion and Prospect 375
18
Online Engineering and Open Computational Systems 377
Martin Fredriksson and Rune Gustavsson
1. Introduction 377
2. Open Computational Systems 379
3. Online Engineering 382
4. Methodological Benchmarking 386
5. Concluding Remarks and Future Work 388
Part VI Emerging Trends and Perspectives
Introduction 393
19
Agents for Ubiquitous Computing 395
Zakaria Maamar, Walter Binder and Boualem Benatallah
1. Introduction 395
2. Examples on Ubiquitous Computing 397
3. Background 398
4. Dimensions of Ubiquitous Computing 401
5. Contributions of Agents to Ubiquitous Computing 404
6. Conclusion 411
20
Agents and the Grid 413
Luc Moreau, Michael Luck, Simon Miles, Juri Papay, Keith Decker and Terry Payne
1. Introduction 413
2. The Grid and Bioinformatics 414
3. Agents in Bioinformatics Grids 416
x Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems
4. Agent-Based Service Discovery for Grid Computing 419
5. Architecture Design 423
6. Performance Analysis 426
7. Related Work 428
8. Conclusion and Future Work 429
21
Roadmap of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering 431
Zahia Guessoum, Massimo Cossentino and Juan Pavón
1. Introduction 431
2. Agents as a New Modeling Paradigm 433
3. Methods for Building Multiagent Systems 435
4. Tools for the Implementation, Deployment and Execution 441
5. Application Opportunities 447
6. A Roadmap for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering 448
7. Conclusions 450
References 451
Index 503