Analysis and design of multiagent systems using MAS-CommonKADS

This article proposes an agent-oriented methodology called MAS-CommonKADS and develops a case study. This methodology extends the knowledge engineering methodology CommonKADSwith techniquesfrom objectoriented and protocol engineering methodologies. The methodology consists of the development of seven models: Agent Model, that describes the characteristics of each agent; Task Model, that describes the tasks that the agents carry out; Expertise Model, that describes the knowledge needed by the agents to achieve their goals; Organisation Model, that describes the structural relationships between agents (software agents and/or human agents); Coordination Model, that describes the dynamic relationships between software agents; Communication Model, that describes the dynamic relationships between human agents and their respective personal assistant software agents; and Design Model, that refines the previous models and determines the most suitable agent architecture for each agent, and the requirements of the agent network

CML: the commonKADS conceptual modelling language

We present a structured language for the specification of knowledge models according to the CommonKADS methodology. This language is called CML (Conceptual Modelling Language) and provides both a structured textual notation and a diagrammatic notation for expertise models. The use of our CML is illustrated by a variety of examples taken from the VT elevator design system

Towards a scope management of non-functional requirements in requirements engineering

Getting business stakeholders’ goals formulated clearly and project scope defined realistically increases the chance of success for any application development process. As a consequence, stakeholders at early project stages acquire as much as possible knowledge about the requirements, their risk estimates and their prioritization. Current industrial practice suggests that in most software projects this scope assessment is performed on the user’s functional requirements (FRs), while the non-functional requirements (NFRs) remain, by and large, ignored. However, the increasing software complexity and competition in the software industry has highlighted the need to consider NFRs as an integral part of software modeling and development. This paper contributes towards harmonizing the need to build the functional behavior of a system with the need to model the associated NFRs while maintaining a scope management for NFRs. The paper presents a systematic and precisely defined model towards an early integration of NFRs within the requirements engineering (RE). Early experiences with the model indicate its ability to facilitate the process of acquiring the knowledge on the priority and risk of NFRs

Teaching programming at a distance: the Internet software visualization laboratory

This paper describes recent developments in our approach to teaching computer programming in the context of a part-time Masters course taught at a distance. Within our course, students are sent a pack which contains integrated text, software and video course material, using a uniform graphical representation to tell a consistent story of how the programming language works. The students communicate with their tutors over the phone and through surface mail. Through our empirical studies and experience teaching the course we have identified four current problems: (i) students' difficulty mapping between the graphical representations used in the course and the programs to which they relate, (ii) the lack of a conversational context for tutor help provided over the telephone, (iii) helping students who due to their other commitments tend to study at 'unsociable' hours, and (iv) providing software for the constantly changing and expanding range of platforms and operating systems used by students. We hope to alleviate these problems through our Internet Software Visualization Laboratory (ISVL), which supports individual exploration, and both synchronous and asynchronous communication. As a single user, students are aided by the extra mappings provided between the graphical representations used in the course and their computer programs, overcoming the problems of the original notation. ISVL can also be used as a synchronous communication medium whereby one of the users (generally the tutor) can provide an annotated demonstration of a program and its execution, a far richer alternative to technical discussions over the telephone. Finally, ISVL can be used to support asynchronous communication, helping students who work at unsociable hours by allowing the tutor to prepare short educational movies for them to view when convenient. The ISVL environment runs on a conventional web browser and is therefore platform independent, has modest hardware and bandwidth requirements, and is easy to distribute and maintain. Our planned experiments with ISVL will allow us to investigate ways in which new technology can be most appropriately applied in the service of distance education

A Revised Textual Tree Trace Notation for Prolog

This paper describes a ''textual tree trace'' (TTT) notation for representing the execution of Prolog programs. Compact, textual and non-linear, it provides detailed information about variable binding and execution history, and distinguishes several modes of goal failure. The revised form given here, yet to be empirically tested, is partly informed by Paul Mulholland's empirical comparisons of Prolog trace notations, in which an earlier version of the TTT notation was amongst those studied and criticised. The work presented here is an updated version of a previous workshop paper (Taylor, du Boulay, & Patel, 1994)