Decision Criteria for Tool Selection in Agent-based Development

Agent-oriented process model, proven methods and appropriate tools for supporting the process and methods are major issues that software engineers and managers should decide about them in developing agent-based systems. Software engineers should select appropriate tools when faced with a set of various tools with different functionalities and characteristics. In this paper, based on the existing practices in software engineering tools assessment and our experiences in developing agent-based systems, we present and define major decision criteria for a tool selection framework in agent-based development. Developers can use this framework for evaluating and selecting appropriate tool(s) for doing their development tasks. These criteria can be used in developing a decisionmaking technique for tool selection in agent-based development.

[1]  Sooyong Park,et al.  Agent-Oriented Software Modeling with UML Approach , 2000 .

[2]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Applications of intelligent agents , 1998 .

[3]  Timothy W. Finin,et al.  KQML as an agent communication language , 1994, CIKM '94.

[4]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design , 2000, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[5]  Barbara Ann Kitchenham,et al.  Evaluating software engineering methods and tools part 6: identifying and scoring features , 1997, SOEN.

[6]  Bernhard Bauer,et al.  Extending UML for agents , 2000 .

[7]  Hyacinth S. Nwana,et al.  ZEUS: A Toolkit for Building Distributed Multiagent Systems , 1999, Appl. Artif. Intell..

[8]  Roger S. Pressman,et al.  Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach (McGraw-Hill Series in Computer Science) , 2004 .

[9]  Michael Fisher,et al.  A Survey of Concurrent METATEM - the Language and its Applications , 1994, ICTL.

[10]  Amund Tveit,et al.  A survey of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering , 2001 .

[11]  Barbara Ann Kitchenham,et al.  Evaluating software engineering methods and tool part 1: The evaluation context and evaluation methods , 1996, SOEN.

[12]  Agostino Poggi,et al.  Exploiting UML in the Design of Multi-agent Systems , 2000, ESAW.

[13]  Keith S. Decker,et al.  Towards a Distributed, Environment-Centered Agent Framework , 1999, ATAL.

[14]  Scott A. DeLoach,et al.  An Overview of the Multiagent Systems Engineering Methodology , 2000, AOSE.

[15]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Preliminary thoughts on an agent description language , 1991, Int. J. Intell. Syst..

[16]  Nicolas Lhuillier,et al.  FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS , 2003 .

[17]  Carlos Angel Iglesias,et al.  A Survey of Agent-Oriented Methodologies , 1998, ATAL.

[18]  Vicky Mosley,et al.  How to assess tools efficiently and quantitatively , 1992, IEEE Software.

[19]  Sarah Rebecca Thomas,et al.  PLACA, an agent oriented programming language , 1993 .

[20]  Yoav Shoham,et al.  Agent-Oriented Programming , 1992, Artif. Intell..

[21]  Roger S. Pressman,et al.  Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach , 1982 .

[22]  Alan Keith Galan.  JiVE: JAFMAS INTEGRATED VISUAL ENVIRONMENT , 2000 .

[23]  Scott A. DeLoach,et al.  Analysis and Design using MaSE and agentTool , 2001 .

[24]  Jörg P. Müller,et al.  Intelligent Agents V, Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, 5th International Workshop, ATAL '98, Paris, France, July 4-7, 1998, Proceedings , 1999, ATAL.

[25]  Krishna M. Kavi,et al.  Guest Editors' Introduction: Software Tools Assessment , 1996, IEEE Softw..

[26]  Jorge J. Gómez-Sanz,et al.  Agent Oriented Analysis Using Message/UML , 2001, AOSE.

[27]  Fausto Giunchiglia,et al.  A knowledge level software engineering methodology for agent oriented programming , 2001, AGENTS '01.

[28]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Agent Systems and Applications , 1998, Knowl. Eng. Rev..

[29]  Jürgen Lind,et al.  Massive: software engineering for multiagent systems , 1999 .

[30]  B. Prather,et al.  Critical failure points of CASE tool evaluation and selection , 1993, Proceedings of 6th International Workshop on Computer-Aided Software Engineering.

[31]  Agostino Poggi,et al.  Jade - a fipa-compliant agent framework , 1999 .

[32]  Joey F. George,et al.  Systems Analysis and Design , 1995 .

[33]  John R. Searle,et al.  Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language , 1970 .

[34]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Agent-Oriented Software Engineering: The State of the Art , 2009, AOSE.