An agent-oriented approach to service analysis and design

International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2008

Agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) paradigm represents an interesting means of analyzing, designing and building complex software systems quite suitable to new software development requirements. Many scientific researches have been focused on this paradigm, yet its current state still reports relative lack of industrial acceptance compared to others. As a survey of AOSE paradigm, this paper outlines the overall state of this paradigm; and by identifying its weaknesses in detail, leads to a proposal solution to such shortcoming. This solution, in keeping with the existing approaches that aim to use situational method engineering (SME) in collaborative manner between agent-oriented methodology designers, suggests the use of a methodology evaluation framework in the process as well. This framework is a means to collect the best method fragment and evaluate consecutively the methodology during the development process for possible methodology improvements. The proposed solution is then readjusted to help software development organizations to reach the fifth level of Capability Maturity Model (CMM).

2011

Implementing and deploying a complete multiagent system in whatever domain, especially those that are inherently complex and dynamic, is undoubtedly a very hard and time-consuming task. This paper analyzes the adequacy of traditional approaches in the field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering to create adequate multi-agent systems applicable to the transportation domain. Our findings suggested that, albeit some approaches are intended to be generic enough to represent a wide range of different domains, intelligent transportation systems and more specifically the whole complexity of future urban transport are not totally supported. We propose a novel methodology where the concept of services is considered as peer of agents, ambient and processes. Also services rise as prominent elements in the modeling phase. The approach, illustrated as a typical scenario in the transport domain, is instantiated, which serves to clarify the whole process and main concepts in our modeling methodology.

2007

Agents and services are two concepts that more and more are integrating and exploiting the advantages of each other. Agent-oriented methodologies effectively support the development of agent-based system in the different phases. In this paper, we explore how and how much the most common agent-oriented methodologies are also oriented to the development of services. Rather than searching for the "best" methodology, we aim at defining some evaluation criteria and surveying the existing methodologies considering such criteria.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is more and more recognised by the industry as the reference blueprint for building inter-operable, distributed enterprise applications based on open standards such as Web Services (WS). In the current state-of-the-art, the programming models for engineering SOA systems proposed by the leading industries are essentially component-based-typically, rooted in object-oriented abstractions and technologies. On the side, such a choice benefits from the well-know advantages of component-based software engineering and from the maturity of the available technologies; on the other, however, the abstraction level provided is inadequate to model some fundamental SOA aspects-such as autonomy, control-uncoupling, data-driven interaction, activities-as firstclass concepts. Such features can be modelled quite naturally by adopting an agent-oriented perspective. In this paper we describe simpA-WS, a Java-based framework for developing SOA/WS applications which adopts an agentoriented programming model based on the general-purpose Agents and Artifacts meta-model (A&A). simpA-WS makes it possible to conceive, design and program services (and applications using services) as workspaces where ensemble of pro-active, activity-oriented entities (agents) work together by exploiting different kinds of passive function-oriented entities (artifacts) used as resources, along with tools to support their business activities. Accordingly, we first present the simpA-WS framework and the related simpA language-an extension of Java aimed at capturing the A&A metaphors as first-class entities; we then show how agents and artifacts can be programmed in simpA and how SOA/WS applications can be programmed in simpA-WS; a simple running example is discussed for concreteness. • the service requestor, which encapsulates the business logic on how to use services: from an interaction point of view, this results in sending and receiving messages in compliance with the service interface specification;

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008

… Conference on E- …, 2008

In today's rapidly changing environment the industries are interested in executing business functions that has scope in multiple applications. Business dynamics and technological innovations have felt organizations to comply with a disparate mix of operating systems, ...

2005

The current World-Wide Web was intended to be used by people, but most experts, including the founder of the WWW, Tim Berners-Lee, agree that the future WWW will have to evolve to include usage by computer systems. Moreover, the impact of computer usage will exceed that of human usage. The evolution is expected to occur through the design and deployment of Web services. The term Web services sometimes refers to services that employ a particular set of basic standards. Since these standards are all but incidental to the key concepts of services and services apply even in settings strictly different from the WWW, it is helpful to think of service-oriented computing as a more general topic.

Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 2009

Many efforts are currently devoted to provide software developers with methods and techniques that can endow service-oriented computing with systematic and accountable engineering practices. To this purpose, a number of languages and calculi have been proposed within the S project that address different levels of abstraction of the software engineering process. Here, we report on two such languages and the way they can be formally related within an integrated approach that can lead to verifiable development of service components from more abstract architectural models of business activities.

Method engineering techniques albeit proven effective for paradigms such as function, object and component, are pertinent to limited aspects of service orientation (SO). The comparison frameworks show that the pro- duced methods neither conform to SO design principles nor to SOA, which is an issue. This paper proposes a framework to guide engineering methods for service-oriented software engineering. It describes a method by its aggregates and the relationships between elements such as Service Science (SS), SO, SOA, SOC, and Web. The paper also describes the guidance for method engineering. The framework consists of two layered categories of entities: (C1) conceptual foundation entities: SS, SO, and SOA, and (C2) realization infrastructure entities: SOC and Web. These entities request and provide services from/to each other. The framework comprehensively describes the SOSE environment, enforces the construct service with fundamental properties and principles, produces SOSE methods t...

Multiagent and Grid Systems, 2012

The objective of service-oriented computing (SOC) is to construct software applications out of appropriate services available and executing in place anywhere across the Web. To achieve this objective requires that techniques for discovering and engaging services be developed and used across the lifetime of the service-based applications. Succeeding with SOC in this broader sense presupposes that additional techniques be developed for ensuring desired quality of service metrics and service-level agreements. The crucial aspect of using services is thus their governance. In this paper, we describe a conceptual modelling approach that integrates organisational and coordination theories to achieve contextualised service governance. The approach allows for the development and analysis of dynamic, flexible, and robust service-oriented business applications.