From Object Specification towards Agent Design

Nowadays, object specification technology is successfully used for modelling information systems. However, object-oriented modelling cannot cover all aspects (e.g. dynamic behaviour evolution) of such systems. A promising approach to get a grasp of these additional requirements for modelling information systems is the specification of systems as communicating, cooperating and autonomous agents. In the present paper we sketch an evolutionary extension of object specification towards agent modelling. Here, we have to emphasize that this paper is not intended to offer perfect solutions. Our aim is to discuss and fix a research agenda for a formal agent approach which promises to provide a semantically richer framework for the specification of information systems.

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