Agent-Based Software Engineering, Paradigm Shift, or Research Program Evolution

Information systems are deeply linked to human activities. Unfortunately, development methodologies have been traditionally inspired by programming concepts and not by organizational and human ones. This leads to ontological and semantic gaps between the systems and their environments. The adoption of agent orientation and multi-agent systems (MAS) helps to reduce these gaps by offering modeling tools based on organizational concepts (actors, agents, goals, objectives, responsibilities, social dependencies, etc.) as fundamentals to conceive systems through all the development process. Moreover, software development is becoming increasingly complex. Stakeholders' expectations are growing higher while the development agendas have to be as short as possible. Project managers, business analysts, and software developers need adequate processes and models to specify the organizational context, capture requirements, and build efficient and flexible systems.

PRINCIPLES OF BUILDING SELF-ORGANIZING INFORMATION AND TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

The article discusses the basic foundations of the functioning and evolution of complex distributed information and telecommunication systems (ITS) in the neuro-fuzzy agent-based paradigm. The formalization principles for such systemsareproposed:goal structuring, agent orientation, hierarchical intellectual organization, modularity of intelligent agents, structural and functional flexibility of intelligent agents, single mathematical apparatus, self-development and system evolution.The concept of a distributed intelligent ITS as a geographically distributed multi-level hierarchical set of hardware and software controlled by agent-based systems is introduced.

Agent-Based Software Engineering, Paradigm Shift, or Research Program Evolution

Information systems are deeply linked to human activities. Unfortunately, development methodologies have been traditionally inspired by programming concepts and not by organizational and human ones. This leads to ontological and semantic gaps between the systems and their environments. The adoption of agent orientation and multi-agent systems (MAS) helps to reduce these gaps by offering modeling tools based on organizational concepts (actors, agents, goals, objectives, responsibilities, social dependencies, etc.) as fundamentals to conceive systems through all the development process. Moreover, software development is becoming increasingly complex. Stakeholders' expectations are growing higher while the development agendas have to be as short as possible. Project managers, business analysts, and software developers need adequate processes and models to specify the organizational context, capture requirements, and build efficient and flexible systems.

A Reference Model for the Integration of Agent Orientation in the Operative Environment of Automation Systems

This work introduces a reference model for automation agents that can be seamlessly integrated in existing process control systems. This model combines the advantages of function block technology, service orientation and agent orientation. Concept decisions about modularity, service-oriented interaction and procedure description provide a base for the development of process control- diagnosis-, model management-, project management- and other agents. The model is implemented in a platform-neutral development environment as a proof of concept and tested with an industrial plant. ...

Designing Agent-Based Process Systems-Extending the OPEN Process Framework

Originally a development methodology targeted at object technology, the OPEN Process Framework (OPF) is found to be a successful basis for extensions that support agent-oriented software development. Here we describe the process components necessary to agent-oriented support and illustrate the extensions by means of two small case studies that illustrate the extensions by means of two small case studies that illustrate both task-driven processes and goal-driven processes. The additional process components for Tasks and Techniques are all generated from the OPF’s metamodel, which gives the OPF its flexibility and tailorability to a wide variety of situations—here agent-orientation.

A Modern Epistemological Reading of Agent Orientation

This article presents a modern epistemological validation of the process of agent oriented software development. Agent orientation has been widely presented in recent years as a novel modeling, design and programming paradigm for building systems using features such as openness, dynamics, sociality and intentionality. These will be put into perspective through a Lakatosian epistemological approach. The contribution of this article is to get researchers acquainted with the epistemological basis of the agent research domain and the context of the emergence of object and agent-orientation. This article advocates the use of the Lakatosian research programme concept as an epistemological basis for object and agent orientation. This is done on the basis of how these frameworks operationalize relevant theoretical concepts of the Kuhnian and Lakatosian theories.