Abstract
Systems composed of interacting autonomous agents offer a promising
software engineering approach for developing applications in complex
domains. However, this multiagent system paradigm introduces a number
of new abstractions and design/development issues when compared with
more traditional approaches to software development. Accordingly,
new analysis and design methodologies, as well as new tools, are
needed to effectively engineer such systems. Against this background,
the contribution of this article is twofold. First, we synthesize
and clarify the key abstractions of agent-based computing as they
pertain to agent-oriented software engineering. In particular, we
argue that a multiagent system can naturally be viewed and architected
as a computational organization, and we identify the appropriate
organizational abstractions that are central to the analysis and
design of such systems. Second, we detail and extend the Gaia methodology
for the analysis and design of multiagent systems. Gaia exploits
the aforementioned organizational abstractions to provide clear guidelines
for the analysis and design of complex and open software systems.
Two representative case studies are introduced to exemplify Gaia's
concepts and to show its use and effectiveness in different types
of multiagent system.
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