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From AO Methodologies to MAS Infrastructures: The SODA Case Study

Ambra Molesini, Enrico Denti, Andrea Omicini
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.

Engineering Societies in the Agents World VIII, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4995, pages 300-317, September 2008.
Alexander Artikis, Gregory O'Hare, Kostas Stathis, George Vouros (eds.), Springer
8th International Workshop (ESAW'07), 22-24 October 2007, Athens, Greece 
@incollection{soda-esawVIII,
	Author = {Molesini, Ambra and Denti, Enrico and Omicini, Andrea},
	Booktitle = {Engineering Societies in the Agents World VIII},
	Doi = {10.1007/978-3-540-87654-0},
	Editor = {Artikis, Alexander and O'Hare, Gregory and Stathis, Kostas and Vouros, George},
	Isbn = {978-3-540-87653-3},
	Issn = {0302-9743},
	Issn-Online = {1611-3349},
	Month = sep,
	Note = {8th International Workshop (ESAW'07), 22--24~} # oct # {~2007,  Athens, Greece. Revised Selected Papers},
	Pages = {300--317},
	Publisher = {Springer},
	ScopusId = {2-s2.0-55249105476},
	Series = {LNCS},
	Title = {From {AO} Methodologies to {MAS} Infrastructures: The {{\sf SODA}} Case Study},
	Url = {http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-540-87654-0_17},
	Url-Pdf = {http://www.springerlink.com/content/yh7x3253p4j535r9/fulltext.pdf},
	Volume = 4995,
	Year = 2008}