From a Goal-Oriented Methodology to a BDI Agent Language: The Case of Tropos and Alan

This approach aims at addressing crucial issues in complex distributed software such as capability of evolving and adaptivity. Within the area of goaloriented software requirements engineering, we propose the use of goal models at different abstraction levels in engineering a Multi-Agent System (MAS), namely, not only at design time, but also as a part of the agent knowledge and choice strategy, at run-time. In this paper we briefly overview a mapping between Tropos concepts and Alan (an agent-object programming language) structures. Specifically, we focus on two advantages of our approach: first, Alan allows us to use in an integrated fashion both agent oriented and object oriented design principles. Second, Alan has a well defined semantics expressed by means of rewriting logic. This allows us to verify the properties of an agent both at design time and at run-time (when its knowledge and behavior can have been modified).