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Agent-based software engineering

Agent-based software engineering

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The technology of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems is expected to alter radically the way in which complex, distributed, open systems are conceptualised and implemented. The paper considers the problem of building a multi-agent system as a software engineering enterprise. Three issues are focused on: how agents might be specified; how these specifications might be refined or otherwise transformed into efficient implementations; and how implemented agents and multi-agent systems might subsequently be verified, to show that they are correct with respect to their specifications. These issues are discussed with reference to a number of case studies. The paper concludes by setting out some issues and open problems for future research.

Inspec keywords: cooperative systems; software engineering; software agents; formal specification; open systems

Other keywords: agent-based software engineering; case studies; complex distributed open systems; research; agent verification; multi-agent systems; specification refinement; agent specification; intelligent agents

Subjects: Software engineering techniques; Artificial intelligence (theory); Expert systems and other AI software and techniques

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