Agents and Software Engineering

Software engineers continually strive to develop tools and techniques to manage the complexity that is inherent in software systems. In this article, we argue that intelligent agents and agent-based systems are just such tools. Following a discussion on the subject of what makes software complex, we introduce intelligent agents as software structures capable of making “rational decisions”. Such rational decision-makers are well-suited to the construction of certain types of software, which mainstream software engineering has had little success with. We then go on to examine a number of prototype techniques proposed for engineering agent systems, including formal specification and verification methods for agent systems, and techniques for implementing agent specifications.