Patterns d'Analyse pour l'Ingénierie de Systèmes d'Information à base d'Agents : Une Application au Domaine du Transport

National audienceIntelligent Transport Information Systems may find benefit of using agent-based solutions. Actually, transport information systems require adaptability to varying changes in offers, and unexpected occurring events. Agents and multiagent systems provide such requirements. Unfortunately, agent-based information systems such as other distributed, asynchronous, loose-coupling applications are difficult to design and implement due to lack of best practices to ease development. This paper describes an approach based on software pattern reuse facilitating engineering of such systems. Patterns are generic solutions to frequently occurring problems. Metamodel represents and structures agent concepts. Fourteen analysis patterns have been specified from this metamodel and describe conceptual entities for the design of an agent-based IS application. Reuse support patterns help designers to reuse former patterns during the information system application engineering

Patterns for Agent-Based Information Systems: A Case Study in Transport

International audienceIntelligent Transport Information Systems may find benefit of using agent-based solutions. Actually, transport information systems require adaptability to varying changes in offers, and unexpected occurring events. Agents and multiagent systems provide such requirements. Unfortunately, agent-based information systems such as other distributed, asynchronous, loose coupling applications are difficult to design and implement due to lack of best practices to ease development. This paper describes an approach based on software pattern reuse that facilitates engineering of these systems. Some patterns have been specified for the analysis and design of such information systems and are described here. Implementation patterns for a specific platform are sketched in perspectives of this research

The Specification of Requirements in the MADAE-Pro Software Process

MADAE-Pro is an ontology-driven process for multi-agent domain and application engineering which promotes the construction and reuse of agent-oriented applications families. This article introduces MADAE-Pro, emphasizing the description of its domain analysis and application requirements engineering phases and showing how software artifacts produced from the first are reused in the last one. Illustrating examples are extracted from two case studies we have conducted to evaluate MADAE-Pro. The first case study assesses the Multi-Agent Domain Engineering sub-process of MADAE-Pro through the development of a multi-agent system family of recommender systems supporting alternative (collaborative, content-based and hybrid) filtering techniques. The second one, evaluates the Multi-Agent Application Engineering sub-process of MADAE-Pro through the construction of InfoTrib, a Tax Law recommender system which provides recommendations based on new tax law information items using a content-based filtering technique. ONTOSERS and InfoTrib were modeled using ONTORMAS, a knowledge-based tool for supporting and automating the tasks of MADAEPro

Технология разработки прикладных многоагентных систем в инструментальной среде MASDK

The paper presents a software development environment intended for support of the multiagent technology based on Gaia methodology. The aforementioned environment implements graphical development style and support the whole life cycle of multi-agent applications development.Приводится описание инструментальной среды, которая предназначена для поддержки технологии разработки прикладных многоагентных систем, построенной на основе методологии Gaia. Инструментальная среда реализует графический стиль разработки и поддерживает полный цикл создания прикладных многоагентных систем

Modelo de simulação baseado agentes para o estudo da influência de planos de processos alternativos na programação da produção em sistemas de manufatura com layout funcional

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia MecânicaO presente trabalho trata do problema da execução das funções de planejamento de processo e seqüenciamento da produção de forma integrada ou paralela, ao invés da abordagem tradicional e seqüencial. É esta nova forma de execução que se apresenta como o campo ideal para o emprego de planos de processos alternativos, buscando melhorias nas métricas do seqüenciamento, isto porque planos de processos pré-fixados contribuem, via de regra, para um desbalanceamento no carregamento de máquina, criando gargalos produtivos, além de gerar conflitos de seqüenciamento quando da alocação das máquinas. O contexto apresentado foi motivador para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho, através do qual busca-se responder questões relativas à (a) como os planos de processos alternativos, gerados durante o planejamento dinâmico, podem influenciar no seqüênciamento da produção, sob a ótica das diferentes flexibilidades a serem consideradas no planejamento do processo; (b) como representar estas flexibilidades de forma adequada em um modelo de simulação; (c) quais as métricas que devem ser adotadas para a medição da performance do seqüênciamento da produção; e (d) qual o tipo de layout a ser considerado como alvo deste tipo de correlação? São estas, entre outras, as questões que levam ao objetivo traçado para este trabalho de pesquisa, que é: Propor, implementar e validar um modelo de simulação baseado em uma sociedade multiagentes, que permita o estudo da correlação entre planos de processo alternativos, representados sob a forma de diferentes flexibilidades, e o seqüênciamento da produção em um ambiente de layout funcional. Para alcançar este objetivo foi definida uma sociedade baseada em agentes; criados protocolos de negociação e re-negociação que permitem aos agentes cooperar e coordenar suas ações; e finalmente foi desenvolvido e validado um protótipo de simulação para a integração entre planos de processos alternativos e o seqüenciamento da produção aderente às normas de padronização internacionais. Os objetivos descritos foram atingidos, com o modelo de simulação proposto permitindo a combinação entre quatro diferentes tipos de flexibilidades nos planos de processo: (a) de seqüência; (b) de operações; (c) de processo; e (d) de máquina. Além disto, o modelo ainda permite o uso de precedências entre as operações. Finalmente foi desenvolvimento uma extensão do modelo proposto, baseado em sistemas especialistas, que através da sugestão do roteamento inicial das peças, pode ser usado para minimizar a variabilidade do modelo

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation

Patterns reuse in the PASSI methodology

Design patterns already proved successful in lowering the development time and number of errors of object-oriented software; now, they are, candidate to play a similar role in the MAS (multi-agent system) context. In this work we describe our experiences in the identification, production and application of patterns for agents. Some patterns are described together with the classification criteria and documentation approach we adopt. Upon them, we base a pattern reuse process that can be considered one of the distinguishing elements of the design methodology (PASSI) we use to develop MAS. Patterns can be applied to an existing agent or used to produce a new one with the support of a specific web based application that can read both the JAVA source code and XMI representation of the agent design documentation. After the successful application of the desired pattern(s), the source code and the design diagrams (usually a structural and dynamic diagram) of the agent can be exported. Some experimental results are reported in order to demonstrate the utility of this approach in automatically producing an interesting percentage of code lines