The MESSAGE methodology has shown that the application of meta-models in the development of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) facilitates the integration of current software engineering processes and the use of agent technology concepts in analysis and design activities. This paper presents an extension to the MESSAGE meta-models and how to conduct the modelling (i.e., instantiation of the meta-models ...

In this paper, I will discuss the conceptual foundation of agentoriented software development by relating the fundamental elements of the agentoriented view to those of other, well established programming paradigms, especially the object-oriented approach. Furthermore, I will motivate the concept of autonomy as the basic property of the agent-oriented school and discuss the development history ...

The metaphors of autonomous agents and agent societies have the potential to make a signi cant impact on the processes of analysis design and development of complex software systems on the Internet In this chapter we concentrate predominantly on agent societies and show how work on coordination models and technologies provides a powerful framework for the engineering of Internet based multi age...

The diversity of multi-agent systems creates the need for tools and methodologies to achieve their designs. UML has been proposed as a new approach for agent modeling, yet it does not support the concept of agents. This paper describes a UML profile that we defined for Multi-Agent Systems MAS. In order to support the definition of this profile the ArgoUML tool was extended. The extended tool al...

Roles are an essential concept within agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). Role definitions in current AOSE methodologies are usually claimed to be for use at the requirements level. However, in most methodologies, they are too low level, specifying too much detail. In this paper, we present a "higher level" role specification. The role specification method described in this paper works ...

Although there is a huge amount of work and valuable proposals about agent oriented software engineering, it seems that the paradigm has not been fully accepted yet by software industry. Some claim that there is a need for a killer application showing the benefits of multi-agent systems with respect to other techniques without any doubt. Others may consider the approach as too academic to be ap...

Roles have a limited use within object-oriented (OO) analysis and design. In extending OO concepts to agentoriented software engineering (AOSE), roles must be adapted to incorporate autonomy and other agent essentials. In this paper, we present our perspective on roles and how to specify them. We also introduce an extension to roles for design, namely agent classes. We describe how roles and ag...

Agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) is rapidly emerging in response to urgent needs in both software engineering and agent-based computing. While these two disciplines co-existed without remarkable interaction until some years ago, today there is rich and fruitful interaction among them and various approaches are available that bring together techniques, concepts and ideas from both side...