Improving the agent-oriented modeling process by roles

The agent-oriented modeling process is divided in a typical sequence of activities, i.e., \emph{requirements specification}, \emph{analysis}, and \emph{design}. The \emph{requirements} are specified by descriptions of the system's functionality and by exemplary scenarios of essential interactions. In \emph{analysis} the system's structure is captured and mandatory behavior of agents is prescribed. The \emph{design} model describes system behavior by means of local operations. The problem arises how the transition between these different stages of the modeling process can be performed. In this paper, we introduce a concept of roles in order to support the transition in a systematic way and thereby improving the agent-oriented modeling process.

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