Software engineers have derived a progressively better understanding of the complexity characteristics in software. It is now widely recognised that interaction is probably the most important single characteristic of complex software. Agent-based computing can be considered as a new general purpose paradigm for software development, which tends to radically influence the way a software system i...

This chapter provides a comparison of the 10 agent-oriented software engineering methodologies presented in the preceding chapters. An evaluation framework comprising process-related, technique-related, model-related and supportivefeature criteria is used in this comparison. As each application entails a different set of requirements that indicate which evaluation criteria are the most importan...

Analysis and design of information systems (IS) is the process of eliciting the system’s requirements and transforming them into a model that could be used to develop IS. Analysis and design of agent-oriented information systems (AOIS) relates to the very same process when it is applied to IS that are designed around the multi-agent paradigm. A comprehensive and rigorous methodology for develop...

Agent oriented software engineering is seen as the approach taken object oriented approaches one step ahead. The design of agent systems is based on three fundamental perspectives: the functional, the interactional and the organisational perspective. The organisation perspective becomes a central design issue if the number of agents is large or the environment is unstable. While the functional ...

This paper presents our rst step towards agent-oriented software engineering, focusing on the area of coordinated multi-agent systems. In multi-agent systems, the interactions between the agents are crucial in determining the eeectiveness of the system. Hence the adoption of an appropriate coordination mechanism is pivotal in the design of multi-agent system architectures. This paper does not f...

Organic Computing (OC) is an upcoming research area with strong relationships to the ideas and concepts of agent-based systems. Therefore, in this paper we will have a closer look at agent systems, organic computing systems (as well as autonomic computing systems) and state commonalities and examine divergences between them. We then propose a common view on these technologies and show how they ...

This thesis develops Arnor, an agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) method to engineer social intelligence in personal agents. Arnor goes beyond traditional AOSE methods to engineer personal agents by systematically capturing interactions that influence social experience. We empirically evaluate Arnor via a developer study, and a set of simulation experiments. We find that (1) Arnor suppo...

While there is ample evidence that Multiagent Systems and Technologies (MAS&T) are vigorous as a research area, it is unclear what practical application impact this research area has accomplished to date. In this chapter, we describe method and results of a survey aiming at a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of deployed examples of MAS&T. We collected and analyzed 152 applications, coverin...

abstract In this era of information, traditional practices, technologies, skills, and knowledge are becoming obsolete at a much faster pace than ever before. This makes lifelong learning a necessity for everyone. An e-learning system is a promising solution to the demand for a flexible means of delivering knowledge to educate a large number of people over a vast area. Knowledge management syste...

Agent-oriented software engineering is a new software engineering paradigm that is ideally suited to the analysis and design of complex systems. The main focus of these methodologies is to engineer a complex system in such a way that the correct emergent behavior results. In a complex adaptive system, however, emergent behavior cannot be predicted during analysis and design as it evolves only a...