Bridging the Gap Between Agent-Oriented Design and Implementation Using MDA

Current agent-oriented methodologies focus mainly on multi-agent systems analysis and design, but without providing straightforward connections to the implementation of such systems on any of the existing agent platforms (e.g. FIPA-OS, Jade, or Zeus), or just forcing the use of specific agent platforms. In this paper we show how the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) can be effectively used to derive agent implementations from agent-oriented designs, independently from both the methodology used and the concrete agent platform selected. Furthermore, this transformation process can be defined in an scalable way, and partly automated thanks to the use of a platform-neutral agent model, called Malaca.