Special section on engineering complex software systems through multi-agent systems and simulation

2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 591-592
Author(s):  
Carole Bernon ◽  
Alfredo Garro ◽  
Jorge J. Gomez-Sanz
Author(s):  
Manuel Kolp ◽  
Yves Wautelet ◽  
Sodany Kiv ◽  
Vi Tran

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) architectures are gaining popularity over traditional ones for building open, distributed, and evolving software required by today’s corporate IT applications such as e-business systems, Web services or enterprise knowledge bases. Since the fundamental concepts of multi-agent systems are social and intentional rather than object, functional, or implementation-oriented, the design of MAS architectures can be eased by using social-driven templates. They are detailed agent-oriented design idioms to describe MAS architectures as composed of autonomous agents that interact and coordinate to achieve their intentions, like actors in human organizations. This paper presents social patterns, as well as organizational styles, and focuses on a framework aimed to gain insight into these templates. The framework can be integrated into agent-oriented software engineering methodologies used to build MAS. We consider the Broker social pattern to illustrate the framework. The mapping from system architectural design (through organizational architectural styles), to system detailed design (through social patterns), is overviewed with a data integration case study. The automation of patterns design is also overviewed.


Author(s):  
LILY CHANG ◽  
XUDONG HE ◽  
SOL M. SHATZ

In the past two decades, multi-agent systems have emerged as a new paradigm for conceptualizing large and complex distributed software systems. Even though there are many conceptual frameworks for using multi-agent systems, there is no well established and widely accepted method for the representation of multi-agent systems. We adapt a well-known formal model, predicate transition nets, to include the notions of dynamic structure, agent communication and coordination to address the representation problems. This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for modeling multi-agents based on the extensions. We demonstrate our modeling approach with an example. Several case studies on different application domains from our previous works are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Ali Jazayeri ◽  
Ellen J. Bass

Multi-agent systems and agent-oriented methodologies support analysis, characterization and development of complex software systems. These methodologies introduce different definitions for the essential components of multi-agent systems and cover different phases of the system development life cycle. Therefore, appropriate frameworks for evaluation and comparison of different methodologies would support developers to adopt the best methodology, or a combination of different methodologies, based on the project requirements. This review covers the system development phases and the main conceptual components in the context of multi-agent systems. Then, the evaluation frameworks proposed in the literature for comparison and evaluation of agent-oriented methodologies are reviewed. Evaluation frameworks proposed in the literature are categorized into three categories: methodology-based, phase-based and feature-based evaluation frameworks. The paper concludes with the agent-oriented methodologies’ usage challenges, their current limitations and potential future directions.


Author(s):  
Ambra Molesini ◽  
Enrico Denti ◽  
Andrea Omicini

Since most complex software systems are intrinsically multi-paradigm, their engineering is a challenging issue. Multi-paradigm modeling (MPM) aims at facing the challenge by providing concepts and tools promoting the integration of models, abstractions, technologies, and methods originating from diverse computational paradigms. In this chapter, the authors survey the main MPM approaches in the literature, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and compare them according to three main criteria—namely, (1) the software development process, (2) the adoption of meta-model techniques, (3) the availability of adequate supporting tools. Furthermore, the authors explore the adoption of other promising approaches for the engineering of multi-paradigm systems, such as multi-agent systems (MAS) and systems of systems (SoS), and discuss the role of situational process engineering (SPE) in the composition of multi-paradigm software processes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Sedik Chebout ◽  
Farid Mokhati ◽  
Mourad Badri

Multi Agent Systems (MAS) are increasingly gaining importance as a powerful paradigm to designing and implementing distributed applications. However, existing multi-agent applications are developed without considering the separation of non-functional concerns from the functional ones. This makes the implementation, comprehension and maintenance of multi-agent applications hard tasks. Aspect-Oriented Refactoring (AOR) is a promising technique for improving modularity and reducing complexity of existing object oriented software systems by encapsulating crosscutting concerns. The authors present, in this paper, a new dynamic approach for investigating empirically the effect of AOR on MAS applications. They focus, particularly, on the effect of AOR on agent behavior in terms of communication. The proposed approach is supported by a multi-agent profiling tool working on AgentFactory platform.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document