Agentservice: A Framework for Distributed Multiagent System Development

Abstract Today software systems are complex, dynamic, distributed, and evolve over time. Multi-agent systems (MASs) are a powerful abstraction to model such systems. Agent programming frameworks support software engineers in transforming these abstractions into concrete distributed applications. Even though there is wide availability of tools for multi-agent development, only few of them constitute valid support from a software engineering point of view. AgentService provides a reliable, robust, and modular software infrastructure for MAS development. In this paper, we present the innovative features of the framework, including the agent model, the scheduling engine, and the run-time environment. These components are discussed in detail and compared with the solution adopted by other frameworks.

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