Agent-Oriented Software Engineering [chapter]

Stefan Bussmann, Paolo Ciancarini, Keith Decker, Michael Huhns, Michael Wooldridge
2000 Lecture Notes in Computer Science  
Agent-oriented techniques represent an exciting new means of analysing, designing and building complex software systems. They have the potential to significantly improve current practice in software engineering and to extend the range of applications that can feasibly be tackled. Yet, to date, there have been few serious attempts to cast agent systems as a software engineering paradigm. This paper seeks to rectify this omission. Specifically, it will be argued that: (i) the conceptual apparatus
more » ... of agent-oriented systems is well-suited to building software solutions for complex systems and (ii) agent-oriented approaches represent a genuine advance over the current state of the art for engineering complex systems. Following on from this view, the major issues raised by adopting an agent-oriented approach to software engineering are highlighted and discussed. The Case for an Agent-Oriented Approach to Software Engineering This section characterises the essential nature of real-world software systems (section 2.1) and then goes on to present exactly what we mean by the notion of agent-oriented software (section 2.2). Using these characterisations, arguments are advanced as to why agent-oriented techniques are well suited to developing complex software systems (section 2.3).
doi:10.1007/10719619_18 fatcat:znz3r6xvfvhjvldg6qw63jbqbi