With this book, Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, together with further contributors, introduce the reader to various facets of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). They provide a selected collection of state-of-the-art findings, which combines research from information systems, artificial intelligence, distributed systems and software engineering and covers essential development aspects of agent-based systems. The book chapters are organized into five parts. The first part introduces the AOSE domain in general, including introduction to agents and the peculiarities of software engineering for developing MAS. The second part describes general aspects of AOSE, like architectural models, design patterns and communication. Next, part three discusses AOSE methodologies and associated research directions and elaborates on Prometheus, O-MaSE and INGENIAS. Part four then addresses agent-oriented programming languages. Finally, the fifth part presents studies related to the implementation of agents and multi-agent systems. The book not only provides a comprehensive review of design approaches for specifying agent-based systems, but also covers implementation aspects such as communication, standards and tools and environments for developing agent-based systems. It is thus of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who are interested in exploring the agent paradigm for developing software systems.

"The Art of Agent-Oriented Modeling is an introduction to agent-oriented software development for students and for software developers who are interested in learning about new software engineering techniques."--Foreword.

This state-of-the-art survey examines the credentials of agent-based approaches as a software engineering paradigm. The 15 revised full papers presented together with two invited articles were carefully selected from 49 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and improvement for the Third International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, AOSE 2002, held in Bologna, Italy, during AAMAS 2002. The papers address all current issues in the field of software agents and multi-agent systems relevant for software engineering; they are organized in topical sections on - modeling, specification, and validation - patterns, architectures, and reuse - UML and agent systems - methodologies and tools - positions and perspectives

"The book presents, analyzes and compares the most significant methodological approaches currently available for the creation of agent-oriented software systems"--Provided by publisher.

The main concepts and techniques of multi-agent oriented programming, which supports the multi-agent systems paradigm at the programming level. A multi-agent system is an organized ensemble of autonomous, intelligent, goal-oriented entities called agents, communicating with each other and interacting within an environment. This book introduces the main concepts and techniques of multi-agent oriented programming, (MAOP) which supports the multi-agent systems paradigm at the programming level. MAOP provides a structured approach based on three integrated dimensions, which the book examines in detail: the agent dimension, used to design the individual (interacting) entities; the environment dimension, which allows the development of shared resources and connections to the real world; and the organization dimension, which structures the interactions among the autonomous agents and the shared environment.

As information technologies become increasingly distributed and accessible to larger number of people and as commercial and government organizations are challenged to scale their applications and services to larger market shares, while reducing costs, there is demand for software methodologies and appli- tions to provide the following features: Richer application end-to-end functionality; Reduction of human involvement in the design and deployment of the software; Flexibility of software behaviour; and Reuse and composition of existing software applications and systems in novel or adaptive ways. When designing new distributed software systems, the above broad requi- ments and their translation into implementations are typically addressed by partial complementarities and overlapping technologies and this situation gives rise to significant software engineering challenges. Some of the challenges that may arise are: determining the components that the distributed applications should contain, organizing the application components, and determining the assumptions that one needs to make in order to implement distributed scalable and flexible applications, etc.

Agent technology promises to increase the flexibility and power of software systems to accommodate the next generation of computing, including intelligent Web services, e-business, and grid computing. This unique new reference offers the most thorough and comprehensive explanation of the methods, tools, standards and techniques used to develop software using the agent-oriented approach.

This book assesses the state of the art of agent-based approaches as a software engineering paradigm. The 15 revised full papers presented together with an invited article were carefully selected from 43 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and improvement for the 4th International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, AOSE 2003, held in Melbourne, Australia, in July during AAMAS 2003. The papers address all current issues in the field of software agents and multi-agent systems relevant for software engineering; they are organized in topical sections on - modeling agents and multi-agent systems -methodologies and tools - patterns, architectures, and reuse - roles and organizations.

Jason is an Open Source interpreter for an extended version of AgentSpeak – a logic-based agent-oriented programming language – written in JavaTM. It enables users to build complex multi-agent systems that are capable of operating in environments previously considered too unpredictable for computers to handle. Jason is easily customisable and is suitable for the implementation of reactive planning systems according to the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture. Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason provides a brief introduction to multi-agent systems and the BDI agent architecture on which AgentSpeak is based. The authors explain Jason’s AgentSpeak variant and provide a comprehensive, practical guide to using Jason to program multi-agent systems. Some of the examples include diagrams generated using an agent-oriented software engineering methodology particularly suited for implementation using BDI-based programming languages. The authors also give guidance on good programming style with AgentSpeak. Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason Describes and explains in detail the AgentSpeak extension interpreted by Jason and shows how to create multi-agent systems using the Jason platform. Reinforces learning with examples, problems, and illustrations. Includes two case studies which demonstrate the use of Jason in practice. Features an accompanying website that provides further learning resources including sample code, exercises, and slides This essential guide to AgentSpeak and Jason will be invaluable to senior undergraduate and postgraduate students studying multi-agent systems. The book will also be of interest to software engineers, designers, developers, and programmers interested in multi-agent systems.

The explosive growth of application areas such as electronic commerce, ent- prise resource planning and mobile computing has profoundly and irreversibly changed our views on software systems. Nowadays, software is to be based on open architectures that continuously change and evolve to accommodate new components and meet new requirements. Software must also operate on di?- ent platforms, without recompilation, and with minimal assumptions about its operating environment and its users. Furthermore, software must be robust and ̈ autonomous, capable of serving a naive user with a minimum of overhead and interference. Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of software systems. They o?er higher-level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, p- ception, commitments, goals, beliefs, and intentions, all of which need conceptual modelling. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, tra- action control, adaptive work?ows, brokering and integration of disparate inf- mation sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow more faithful and ?exible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more e?ective requirements an- ysis and architectural/detailed design.