Evolution of Agent-Oriented Distributed Model for Software Testing: Layered Approach

As new requirements arise, on one hand, from the increasing complexity of modern software systems and, on the other hand, from the distribution of today’s information economies, it has been recognized that the modularity and reusability provided by existing techniques and approaches are insufficient. Although, each paradigm has its own contribution in the software engineering field on the support of their proficiencies, due to the exceptional growth of the software industry, researchers continue to strive for more efficient and powerful techniques. Agents are being advocated as a next generation model for engineering complex and distributed systems. They facilitate the automated software testing by virtue of their highlevel decomposition, independency and parallel activation. Here, we address a set of more specific characteristics of agentbased approach (modularity, independency and parallel activation) and its efficacy in software testing. In this paper, we did not only describe the claims for agent-based approach in software testing, but also developed a multi-agent system for software testing with agent qualities. The multi-agent system illustrated here is on the basis of few basic operational realworld testing techniques, as an attempt to describe how to practice Agent-Oriented Software Testing (AOST) which has not previously done.