Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

One of the most important reasons for the current intensity of interest in agent technology is that the concept of an agent, as an autonomous system capable of interacting with other agents in order to satisfy its design objectives, is a natural one for software designers. Just as we can understand many systems as being composed of essentially passive objects, which have a state and upon which we can perform operations, so we can understand many others as being made up of interacting semi-autonomous agents. This book brings together revised versions of papers presented at the First International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, AOSE 2000, held in Limerick, Ireland, in conjunction with ICSE 2000, and several invited papers. As a comprehensive and competent overview of agent-oriented software engineering, the book addresses software engineers interested in the new paradigm and technology as well as research and development professionals active in agent technology.

Part I: Conceptual Foundations
Agent-Oriented Software Engineering: The State of the Art
Interaction-Oriented Programming
Issues in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
　Agent-Based Software Engineering
　Onn Shehory　
Part II： UML for AOSE
　Agent UML: A Formalism for Specifying Multiagent Software Systems
　Agent-Oriented Modeling with Graph Transformation
　Representing Agent Interaction Protocols in UML
Part III: Methodologies for AO Analysis and Design
　On the Identification of Agents in the Design of Production Control Systems
　Agent Software Engineering with Role Modelling
　Designing Agent-Oriented Systems by Analysing Agent Interactions
　Andrea Omicini
　A Modelling Approach for Agent Based Systems Design
　An Overview of the Multiagent Systems Engineering Methodology
　Mark E Wood and Scott A. DeLoach
　Nobukazu Yoshioka, Yasuyuki Tahara, Akihiko Ohsuga, and Shinichi Honiden
　Organizational Abstractions for the Analysis and Design　of Multi-agent Systems
Part IV: Reuse
　Reuse and Abstraction in Verification: Agents Acting in
　Catholijn M. Jonker, Jan Treur, and Wieke de Vries
Part V: Applications and Experiences
　Strategy Selection-Based Meta-level Reasoning for
　Multi-agent Problem-Solving
　Introducing the Adaptive Agent Oriented Software Architecture　and Its Application in Natural Language User Interfaces
　Babak Hodjat and Makoto Amamiya
　Adding Extensible Synchronization Capabilities to the
　Agent Model of a FIPA-Compliant Agent Platform
　Agostino Poggi and Giovanni Rimassa
Author Index