Can Agent Oriented Software Engineering Be Used to Build MASs Product Lines?

On the one hand, the Software Product Lines (SPL) field is devoted to build a core architecture for a family of products from which concrete products can be derived rapidly by means of reuse. On the other hand, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) is a software engineering paradigms dedicated to build software applications composed of organizations of agents. Bringing AOSE to the industrial world may prettily benefit from SPL advantages. Using SPL phi losophy, a company will be able to define a core MAS from which concrete prod ucts will be derived for each customer. This can reduce time-to-market, costs, etcetera. In this paper, we expose the similarities between AOSE and SPL con cluding the viability of future research in Multi-Agent Systems Product Lines (MAS-PL)

Business Family Engineering. Does It Make Sense ?

Nowadays most companies in whichever field have a software system that helps managing all the aspects of the company, from the strategic management to daily activities. Companies are in continuous evolution to adapt to market changes, and consequently, the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure that supports it must also evolve. Thus, software companies are currently supporting this evolution with ad hoc techniques. We think that, as it is being done for traditional software systems (non-oriented to business process) in the software product line (SPL) field, institutionalized techniques for performing a systematic reuse of business processes across different businesses can be introduced. in this paper, we explore the feasibility of adapting SPL techniques, oriented to reuse software, to Business-Driven Development (BDD), oriented to reuse processes, across different businesses; we call this approach Business Family Engineering (BFE). As a result of our study, we show some of the problems we have identified and some of the key aspects needed to enable this new field

Business Family Engineering. Managing the Evolution of Business Driven Systems

Nowadays most companies in whichever field have a software system that helps managing all the aspects of the company, from the strategic management to daily activities. Companies are in continuous evolution to adapt to market changes, and consequently, the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure that supports it must also evolve. Thus, software companies are currently supporting this evolution with ad hoc techniques. We think that, as it is being done for traditional software systems (non-oriented to business process) in the software product line (SPL) field, institutionalized techniques for performing a systematic reuse of business processes across different businesses can be introduced. in this paper, we propose to adapt SPL techniques, oriented to reuse software, to Business-Driven Development (BDD), oriented to reuse processes, across different businesses; we call this proposal Business Family Engineering (BFE). We present a first approach to build a SPL of BDD systems that evolves at runtim

Towards clarifying the importance of interactions in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

Interactions between subparts of a system have been recognized as the source of complexity in many fields ranging from physics, sociology, neurology, to software engineering. Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) was born under the promise of conquering complexity and enabling the development of more complex software. However, current AOSE approaches do not provide enough engineering tools to deal with the complexity derived from interactions. More mature fields such as economy or component-based software systems have recognized that interactions present a predominant role in the determination of the desired outcome providing mature background that can be applied to AOSE. AOSE may improve its ability to deal with complex systems by improving the tools applied to manage agent’s interactions in the overall design of the system. In this paper, we justify this assessment and propose some principles to improve AOSE methodologies regarding complexit

Multiagent System Product Lines: Challenges and Benefits

Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2003-02737-C02-01Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2006-0047

Towards Interaction Protocol Operations for Large Multi-agent Systems

It is widely accepted that role-based modelling is quite adequate in the context of multi-agent systems (MAS) modelling techniques. Unfortunately, very little work has been reported on how to describe the relationships between several role models. Furthermore, many authors agree on that protocols need to be encapsulated into high-level abstractions. The synthesis of role models is an operation presented in the OORAM methodology that allows us to build new role models from others in order to represent the interrelations they have. To the best of our knowledge this operation has to be performed manually at protocol level and works with protocols expressed by means of messages. In this paper, we present two algorithms to extract the protocol of a role from the protocol of a role model and vice versa that automate the synthesis or role models at the protocol level. Furthermore, in order to deal with protocol descriptions in a top down approach both operations work with protocols expressed by means of an abstraction call multi-role interaction (mRI)

Towards Visualisation and Analysis of Runtime Variability in Execution Time of Business Information Systems based on Product Lines

There is a set of techniques that build Business Information Systems (BIS) deploying business processes of the company directly on a process engine. Business processes of companies are continuously changing in order to adapt to changes in the environment. This kind of variability appears at runtime, when a business subprocess is enabled or disabled. To the best of our knowledge, there exists only one approach able to represent properly runtime variability of BIS using Software Product Lines (SPL), namely, Product Evolution Model (PEM). This approach manages the variability by means of a SPL where each product represents a possible evolution of the system. However, although this approach is quite valuable, it does not provide process engineers with the proper support for improving the processes by visualising and analysing execution-time (non-design) properties taking advantage of the benefits provided by the use of SPL. In this paper, we present our first steps towards solving this problem. The contribution of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, we provide a visualisation dashboard for execution-traces based on the use of UML 2.0 timing diagrams, that uses the PEM approach; on the other hand, we provide a conceptual framework that shows a roadmap of the future research needed for analysing execution-time properties of this kind of systems. Thus, due the use of SPL, our approach opens the possibility for evaluating specific conditions and properties of a business process that current approaches do not cover.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) TIN2006-0047

Building the Core Architecture of a NASAa Multiagent System Product Line

The field of Software Product Lines (SPL) emphasizes building a family of software products from which concrete products can be derived rapidly. This helps to reduce time-to-market, costs, etc., and can result in improved software quality and safety. Current Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies are concerned with developing a single Multiagent System. The main contribution of this paper is a proposal to developing the core architecture of a Multiagent Systems Product Line (MAS-PL), exemplifying our approach with reference to a concept NASA mission based on multiagent technology