From AO Methodologies to MAS Infrastructures: The SODA Case Study

In the last years, research on agent-oriented (AO) methodologies and multi-agent system (MAS) infrastructures has developed along two opposite paths: while AO methodologies have essentially undergone a top-down evolution pushed by contributions from heterogeneous fields like human sciences, MAS infrastructures have mostly followed a bottom-up path growing from existing and widespread (typically object-oriented) technologies. This dichotomy has produced a conceptual gap between the proposed AO methodologies and the agent infrastructures actually available, as well as a technical gap in the MAS engineering practice, where methodologies are often built ad hoc out of MAS infrastructures, languages and tools.

This paper proposes a new method for filling the gap between methodologies and infrastructures based on the definition and study of the meta-models of both AO methodologies and MAS infrastructures. By allowing structural representation of abstractions to be captured along with their mutual relations, meta-models make it possible to map design-time abstractions from AO methodologies upon run-time abstractions from MAS technologies, thus promoting a more coherent and effective practice in MAS engineering. In order to validate our method, we take an AO methodology — SODA — and show how it can be mapped upon three different MAS infrastructures using meta-models as mapping guidelines. 

reference talk

 From AOSE Methodologies to MAS Infrastructures: The SODA Case Study (ESAW 2007, 24/10/2007) — Andrea Omicini (Andrea Omicini, Ambra Molesini)

origin event

 ESAW 2007

journal or series

 Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)

container publication

 Engineering Societies in the Agents’ World VIII (edited volume, 2008) — Alexander Artikis, Gregory M.P. O’Hare, Kostas Stathis, George A. Vouros

reference publication for talk

 From AOSE Methodologies to MAS Infrastructures: The SODA Case Study (ESAW 2007, 24/10/2007) — Andrea Omicini (Andrea Omicini, Ambra Molesini)

superseding publication for

 From AOSE Methodologies to MAS Infrastructures: The SODA Case Study (paper in proceedings, 2007) — Ambra Molesini, Enrico Denti, Andrea Omicini