Information Collection and Survey Methodologies for Agent-based Analysis and Design

In recent years, agent-oriented analysis and design has received a great deal of attention, and as a result, several methodologies have been proposed. This article presents a simple survey for current methodologies, and three of them (GAIA, SODA, and EXPAND) are reviewed and evaluated. The reason that we choose these three approaches to discuss is in that they are all having the background based on agent and multi-agent technology and all emphasizing the social-level abstractions. 1 Introduction As new requirements arise, on the one hand, from the increasing complexity of modern software systems, and on the other hand, from the distribute of today's information economies, it has been recognized that the modularity and reusability provided by object-oriented analysis and design is insufficient. Therefore, Agent-oriented approaches, which view interaction as the primary abstraction for the software engineering were believed that can offer the capabilities needed.