1,720,992 research outputs found
Metodologie per l'ingegneria del software: approccio ad agenti
No full textIl paradigma ad agenti ha una influenza sempre crescente sul modo di concepire e progettare i sistemi computazionali complessi. Di conseguenza, vi è un crescente interesse verso lo sviluppo di metodologie di progettazione software “agent-oriented”, al fine di identificare astrazioni efficaci per modellare sistemi ad agenti, con particolare riferimento alla modellazione dell’ambiente in cui questi operano. A tale scopo, in questo lavoro vengono esplorate e messe a confronto quattro diverse metodologie per l'analisi e il progetto di sistemi ad agenti, evidenziandone i rispettivi punti di forza nell'ingegnerizzazione del software secondo il paradigma ad agenti
From AOSE methodologies to MAS infrastructures: The SODA case study
No full textIn 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 ob ject-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
Risk Analysis and Deployment Security Issues in a Multi-Agent System
No full textMulti-agent systems (MASs) are a powerful paradigm enabling effective software engineering techniques: yet, it easily lets the designer be oblivious of the emergent security problems. This can be a critical issue, especially when MASs are exploited as an infrastructure to provide secure services. This paper performs a security analysis of such a scenario, identifying threats and assessing risks that could interfere with the achievement of the application goal – e.g. access control – as a consequence of its MAS-based implementatio
The SODA Methodology: Meta-model and Process Documentation
No full textThe SODA methodology deals with MAS analysis and design, and focuses on critical issues such as agent coordination and MAS-environment interaction. After its first formulation, in order to further meet the needs of complex MAS engineering, SODA was extended to embody both the layering principle and the Agents & Artifacts (A&A) meta-model. As a result, both the SODA meta-model and the SODA process were re-defined, also to include two new phases—Requirement Analysis and Architectural Design. This chapter is then devoted to the documentation of the complete SODA process according to the FIPA standard
The Gaia Methodology Process
No full textGaia was the first complete methodology proposed for the development of multi-agent systems (MASs), and was subsequently improved to designing and building systems in complex, open environments. Gaia focuses on the use of the organizational abstractions to drive the analysis and design of MAS. Gaia models both the macro (social) aspects and the micro (agent internals) aspects of MAS, and devotes a specific effort to model the organizational structure and the organizational rules that govern the global behavior of the agents in the organization. In this chapter we present the complete documentation of the Gaia process following the IEEE-FIPA Documentation Template
MAS Meta-models on Test: UML vs. OPM in the SODA Case Study
No full textIn the AOSE (Agent-Oriented Software Engineering) area, several research efforts are underway to develop appropriate meta-models for agent-oriented methodologies. Meta-models are meant to check and verify the completeness and expressiveness of methodologies.
In this paper, we put to test the well-established standard Unified Modelling Language (UML), and the emergent Object Process Methodology (OPM), and compare their meta-modelling power. Both UML and OPM are used to express the meta-model of SODA, an agent-oriented methodology which stresses interaction and social aspects of MASs (multi-agent systems). Meta-modelling SODA allows us to evaluate the effectiveness of the two approaches over both the structural and dynamics parts. Furthermore, this allow us to find out some desirable features that any effective approach to meta-modelling MAS methodologies should exhibit
Zooming Multi-Agent Systems
Full text linkComplex systems call for a hierarchical description. Analogously, the engineering of non-trivial MASs (multiagent systems) requires principles and mechanisms for a multi-layered description, which could be used by MAS designers to provide different level of abstractions over MASs.
In this paper, we first advocate the need for zooming mechanisms, promoting a coherent and consistent multi-layered view of agent systems. After surveying the best-known AOSE methodologies, we focus on the scaling mechanisms of the OPM process-oriented methodology. Then, by adopting SODA as our reference, we show how an AOSE methodology can be enhanced with simple yet expressive zooming mechanisms. Finally, we present a simple case study where the enhanced agent-oriented methodology (SODA+zoom) is exploited and put to the test
SODA: A Roadmap to Artefacts
No full textAn artefact for MASs is an entity not driven by an inner goal (as agents are), but used by agents to achieve their own goals. In this paper, we assume agents and artefacts as first-class entities in MAS engineering, and claim that agent-oriented methodologies should exploit these two abstractions as the basic bricks for the whole engineering process. As a first testbed, we take the SODA agent-oriented methodology and draw a possible roadmap for its extension toward the notion of artefact
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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