A proposition for exception handling in multi-agent systems

Reliability is a major issue in new software architectures (such as multi-agent systems or software component based architectures) as they aim at integrating separately developed software parts. In this paper, we focus on both multi-agent systems and a crucial feature to ensure software reliability: an appropriate exception handling system. We first introduce the terminology and main concepts of exception handling. We then present the particularities of exception handling in a multi-agent system and identify three main criteria that an exception handling systems for an agent platform should fulfill. After having noticed the lacks of existing propositions regarding these criteria, we present our solution (the SaGE model): an exception handling system dedicated to multiagent systems that simultaneously addresses the previously identified problems. It is inspired by exception handling systems for concurrent programming that we have adapted and extended to the agent domain. It has been implemented and experimented in the multi-agent system MADKit.