Although there is a huge amount of work and valuable proposals about agent oriented software engineering, it seems that the paradigm has not been fully accepted yet by software industry. Some claim that there is a need for a killer application showing the benefits of multi-agent systems with respect to other techniques without any doubt. Others may consider the approach as too academic to be ap...

The implementation of context-aware systems can be supported through the adoption of techniques at the architectural level such as middlewares or component-oriented architectures. It can also be supported by suitable constructs at the programming language level. Context-oriented programming (COP) is emerging as a novel paradigm for the implementation of this kind of software, in particular in t...

In the context of Internet-based applications where heterogeneous, legacy entities should integrate and cooperate, the efficiency of the software production process is a key problem: yet, the classical development cycle and methodologies fall short, calling for ad hoc abstractions, methodologies and tools. In this work, we claim that a task-oriented approach can effectively support the design o...

Roles have a limited use within object-oriented (OO) analysis and design. In extending OO concepts to agentoriented software engineering (AOSE), roles must be adapted to incorporate autonomy and other agent essentials. In this paper, we present our perspective on roles and how to specify them. We also introduce an extension to roles for design, namely agent classes. We describe how roles and ag...

In this paper we describe our effort to merge two existing AOSE methodologies, Prometheus and ROADMAP, by isolating a set of generalpurpose common elements. The remaining parts of the two methodologies are componentized into special purpose “value-adding” features. This approach empowers the developer to assemble a methodology tailored to the given project (and the application domain) by adding...

AOSE methodologies and models borrow various abstractions and concepts from the organization and sociology disciplines. Although they all view multi-agent system as organized society, the organizational abstractions, assumptions, concepts, and models in them are actually used in different ways. It is, therefore desirable to have a systematic way of analyzing and comparing the organizational and...

Service orientation is a new software engineering paradigm that introduces opportunities as well as challenges. Although existing processes and practices can be reused for service oriented development, novel techniques are required to address unique SOA requirements. Work in this area is quite active and only recently is producing some initial results. The aim of this paper is to present a stat...

The ‘ensembles’ identified by the InterLink working group on Software Intensive Systems comprise vast numbers of components adapting and interacting in complex and even unforseen ways. If the analysis of ensembles is difficult, their synthesis, or engineering, is downright intimidating. We show, following a recent three-level approach to agent-oriented software engineering, that it is possible ...

Agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) is a promising approach to developing applications for dynamic open systems. If well developed, these applications can be opportunistic, taking advantage of services implemented by other developers at appropriate times. However, methodologies are needed to aid the development of systems that are both flexible enough to be opportunistic and tightly defi...