Process-based Software Tweaking with Mobile Agents

We describe an approach based upon software process technology to on-the-fly monitoring, redeployment, reconfiguration, and in general adaptation of distributed software applications, in short 'software tweaking'. We choose the term tweaking to refer to modifications in structure and behavior that can be made to individual components, as well as sets thereof, or the overall target system configuration, such as adding, removing or substituting components, while the system is running and without bringing it down. The goal of software tweaking is manifold: supporting run-time software composition, enforcing adherence to requirements, ensuring uptime and quality of service of mission-critical systems, recovering from and preventing faults, seamless system upgrading, etc. Our approach involves dispatching and coordinating software agents - named Worklets - via a process engine, since successful tweaking of a complex distributed software system often requires the concerted action of multiple agents on multiple components. The software tweaking process must incorporate and decide upon knowledge about the specifications and architecture of the target software, as well as Worklets capabilities. Software tweaking is correlated to a variety of other software processes - such as configuration management, deployment, validation and evolution - and allows to address at run time a number of related concerns that are normally dealt with only at development time

Ontology acquisition and exchange of evolutionary product-brokering agents

Agent-based electronic commerce (e-commerce) has been booming with the development of the Internet and agent technologies. However, little effort has been devoted to exploring the learning and evolving capabilities of software agents. This paper addresses issues of evolving software agents in e-commerce applications. An agent structure with evolution features is proposed with a focus on internal hierarchical knowledge. We argue that knowledge base of agents should be the cornerstone for their evolution capabilities, and agents can enhance their knowledge bases by exchanging knowledge with other agents. In this paper, product ontology is chosen as an instance of knowledge base. We propose a new approach to facilitate ontology exchange among e-commerce agents. The ontology exchange model and its formalities are elaborated. Product-brokering agents have been designed and implemented, which accomplish the ontology exchange process from request to integration

Supporting decision making process with "Ideal" software agents: what do business executives want?

According to Simon’s (1977) decision making theory, intelligence is the first and most important phase in the decision making process. With the escalation of information resources available to business executives, it is becoming imperative to explore the potential and challenges of using agent-based systems to support the intelligence phase of decision-making. This research examines UK executives’ perceptions of using agent-based support systems and the criteria for design and development of their “ideal” intelligent software agents. The study adopted an inductive approach using focus groups to generate a preliminary set of design criteria of “ideal” agents. It then followed a deductive approach using semi-structured interviews to validate and enhance the criteria. This qualitative research has generated unique insights into executives’ perceptions of the design and use of agent-based support systems. The systematic content analysis of qualitative data led to the proposal and validation of design criteria at three levels. The findings revealed the most desirable criteria for agent based support systems from the end users’ point view. The design criteria can be used not only to guide intelligent agent system design but also system evaluation

Measuring the Pro-Activity of Software Agents

Despite having well-defined characteristics, software agents do not have a developed set of measures defining their quality. Attempts at evaluating software agent quality have focused on some agent aspects, like the development process, whereas others focusing on the agent as a software product have basically adopted measures associated with other software paradigms, like procedural and object-oriented concepts. Here we propose a set of measures for evaluating software agent pro-activity, the software agent's goal-driven behavioral ability to take the initiative and satisfy its goal

Cooperating Agents for 3D Scientific Data Interpretation

Many organizations collect vast quantities of three-dimensional (3-D) scientific data in volumetric form for a range of purposes, including resource exploration, market forecasting, and process modelling. Traditionally, these data have been interpreted by human experts with only minimal software assistance. However, such manual interpretation is a painstakingly slow and tedious process. Moreover, since interpretation involves subjective judgements and each interpreter has different scientific knowledge and experience, formulation of an effective interpretation often requires the cooperation of numerous such experts. Hence, there is a pressing need for a software system in which individual interpretations can be generated automatically and then refined through the use of cooperative reasoning and information sharing. To this end, a prototype system, SurfaceMapper, has been developed in which a community of cooperating software agents automatically locate and display interpretations in a volume of 3-D scientific data. The challenges and experiences in designing and building such a system are discussed. Particular emphasis is given to the agents' interactions and an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of different cooperation strategies is presented

A BDI Agent Software Development Process

As computer software continues to grow increasingly complex with each passing year, researchers continue to try and develop means to simplify software development. In this thesis, we propose a BDI agent software development process as the next evolution in software development. The goal of this research is to develop a process, which can be used to enable the creation of agent-based systems. This thesis strives to present a practical software development process, which is useful to today\u27s software engineer, by building upon current agent research and proven software engineering practices. Our BDI agent software development process is a systematic process, which enables the decomposition of a system into agents. The Belief-Desire-Intention Model is a fundamental ingredient to our development process. We utilize BDI as a natural method for describing agents in our development process. Our software development process utilizes several forms of use cases, which are useful for defining the architecture of a system in our process. We have also leveraged many other existing software development tools such as CRC cards, patterns and the Unified Development Process. We have made modifications to many of these existing tools so they can be used for agent-based development. These are just some of the tools that provide valuable insight into the development of our BDI agent software development process. In addition to describing our software development process, we will also provide a case study to clarify the description of our BDI agent software development process. Basically, our BDI agent software development process strives to model both the dynamic and static structure of the agents that make up the system. Once we have modeled the stmcture, which makes up the agents in the system the stmcture can then be created in software. l

Understanding and Changing Software Organisations: An Exploration of Four Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

In this article we discuss four different perspectives on software process improvement, which are all based on quite different assumptions. The objective is to expand the views on software process improvement and contribute to a wider understanding of software process improvement. This might facilitate the application of software process improvement and assist in further spreading the approach. The different perspectives are expressed through four different metaphors for the work of process agents. These describe process agents as (1) technical experts, (2) facilitating participants, (3) political agents, and (4) individual therapists. We argue that the four perspectives do not preclude each other and that they can be applied to more or less effect to understand different process improvement situations. The advantages and disadvantages of each perspective for improvement work will be discussed and illustrated by examples from an ongoing software process improvement project

Process Algebras

Process Algebras are mathematically rigorous languages with well defined semantics that permit describing and verifying properties of concurrent communicating systems. They can be seen as models of processes, regarded as agents that act and interact continuously with other similar agents and with their common environment. The agents may be real-world objects (even people), or they may be artifacts, embodied perhaps in computer hardware or software systems. Many different approaches (operational, denotational, algebraic) are taken for describing the meaning of processes. However, the operational approach is the reference one. By relying on the so called Structural Operational Semantics (SOS), labelled transition systems are built and composed by using the different operators of the many different process algebras. Behavioral equivalences are used to abstract from unwanted details and identify those systems that react similarly to external experiments