Agent-Oriented Software Engineering with MASSIVE

Although agents and agent-based computing have been around for some time it is only until now that these topics begin to gain attendance beyond the research community; it is being discovered by non-researches that agent technology is a powerful tool for the development of large and complex systems. These days, typical software architectures contain many dynamically interacting components, each with their own thread of control and engaging in complex coordination protocols [4]. Therefore, a new programming metaphor that captures these systems is needed. Although the basic structural elements of the agent-based approach as well as their connections are not yet fully understood, it nonetheless seems to be a promising means for dealing with these highly complex systems. However, although the agent-oriented view is likely to become a major means to describe complex software systems, development methods, i.e. methods that provide guidelines how to build actual agent-based applications or multiagent systems, are still in their infancy and must be further advanced to establish the technology in an industrial context. As stated in [11]: “Relatively less attention has been paid to the important question of the process that designers go through. Industrial users will use agents more readily if basic principles and guidelines are available . . .”. The strong need for agent and agent systems development methods in industry is exemplified by the major European telecommunication companies that have launched a joint research project to foster the definition of a development method for agent applications [5]. Furthermore, the engineering of agents and multiagent systems is not only a technical matter that has been picked up by industry, it is also an interesting research field that can provide new methods and techniques for a better understanding and modeling of highly complex systems [7].