On the Impact of Agent Communication Languages on the Implementation of Agent Systems

Today’s software platforms that support the construction of agent systems in accordance with the FIPA specifications essentially provide enabling infrastructure services, and are still far away from adequately rendering support to current methodologies and theories for building agent systems, especially when social concepts play a significant role. Elsewhere, we have presented the RICA theory, that smoothly integrates relevant aspects of Agent Communication Languages and Organisational Models, so as to provide guidelines for agent system design. This paper explores the impact of this theory on the actual development and implementation of agent-based applications. For this purpose, the RICA metamodel is considered as a programming language, in which roles, interactions, communicative actions, etc., are first-class language entities. We show how this language can be effectively implemented as a software framework that extends the JADE platform, and provide an example that illustrates its potential.