Analyse des performances d'un système multi-agents par visualisation

The analysis and understanding of computer systems behaviour is an important part in the development cycle. Performance visuali:zation is one of the techniques that can be used to perform a global analysis of a system's behaviour. This technique supports performance debugging. It is essential to identify where and when the ressources are consumed during running time. It pro vides the programmer performance indices and the internai behaviour of the entities in the system. Due to the recent interest in using multi-agent systems in a wide variety of application domains, the analysis and understanding of the internai complex characteristics (interaction, distribution of intelligence, cooperation, coordination, decentralization,. . . ) ofmulti¬agent systems has become a priority. Usually, the behaviour ofa multi-agent system is studied from a global point ofview. The multi-agent system is viewed as a black box where entities interact one with the other in oerder to reach a global goal. Unfortunately, this approach does not provide sufficier information for a complete study ofthe multi-agent system behaviour. A study at the level of the entities composing the multi-agent system is necessar: The performance visualization of a multi-agent system application can be an approach to deal with this problem. Ln this work, we propose an approach to evaluate and to understand the internai behaviour of a multi-agent system application using visualization. We apply this approach on a transport multi-agent application.