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From AO Methodologies to MAS Infrastructures: The SODA Case Study

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Engineering Societies in the Agents World VIII (ESAW 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 4995))

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Abstract

In the last years, research on agent-oriented (AO) methodologies and multi-agent system (MAS) infrastructures has developed along two opposite paths: while AO methodologies have essentially undergone a top-down evolution pushed by contributions from heterogeneous fields like human sciences, MAS infrastructures have mostly followed a bottom-up path growing from existing and widespread (typically object-oriented) technologies. This dichotomy has produced a conceptual gap between the proposed AO methodologies and the agent infrastructures actually available, as well as a technical gap in the MAS engineering practice, where methodologies are often built ad hoc out of MAS infrastructures, languages and tools.

This paper proposes a new method for filling the gap between methodologies and infrastructures based on the definition and study of the meta-models of both AO methodologies and MAS infrastructures. By allowing structural representation of abstractions to be captured along with their mutual relations, meta-models make it possible to map design-time abstractions from AO methodologies upon run-time abstractions from MAS technologies, thus promoting a more coherent and effective practice in MAS engineering. In order to validate our method, we take an AO methodology – SODA – and show how it can be mapped upon three different MAS infrastructures using meta-models as mapping guidelines.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, viale Risorgimento 2, 40136, Bologna, Italy

    Ambra Molesini & Enrico Denti

  2. Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna a Cesena, via Venezia 52, 47023, Cesena, Italy

    Andrea Omicini

Authors
  1. Ambra Molesini
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  2. Enrico Denti
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  3. Andrea Omicini
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Alexander Artikis Gregory M. P. O’Hare Kostas Stathis George Vouros

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Molesini, A., Denti, E., Omicini, A. (2008). From AO Methodologies to MAS Infrastructures: The SODA Case Study. In: Artikis, A., O’Hare, G.M.P., Stathis, K., Vouros, G. (eds) Engineering Societies in the Agents World VIII. ESAW 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4995. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87654-0_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87654-0_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-87653-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-87654-0

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