Abstract
Agent-oriented development is emerging as the software development paradigm of this new century. Indeed, software developers are using agents as a new metaphor for understanding, modeling, and implementing software that operates in dynamic, open, and often unpredictable environments. The growth of interest in software agents has led to the development of new methodologies based on agent concepts. However, requirements traceability has been recognized as an important prerequisite for developing and maintaining high quality software. It is intended to ensure continued alignment between stakeholder requirements and various outputs of the system development process. In this paper we present a general traceability framework, which can be used during agent-oriented development. We also sketch an approach to enhance the Tropos methodology to support traceability. An e-commerce case study is used to demonstrate the applicability of the approach.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bauer, B., Muller, J., and Odell, J. “Agent UML: A Formalism for Specifying Multiagent Interaction”, in Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, AOSE’00, pages 91–104, Limerick, Ireland, 2001.
Castro, J., Kolp, M. and Mylopoulos, J. “Tropos: A Requirements-Driven Software Development Methodology”, in 13 th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CaiSE’01 Interlaken, Switzerland, June 2001. LNCS 2068, pp. 108–123.
Castro, J. Kolp, M. and Mylopoulos, J. Towards Requirements-Driven Information Systems Engineering: The Tropos Project. Information Systems Journal, Elsevier, 2002. Vol 27, pp. 365–89
Chung, L. K., Nixon, B. A., Yu, E., and Mylopoulos, J. Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering, Kluwer Publishing, 2000.
Finin, T., Labrou, Y. and Mayfield, J.. KQML as an Agent Communication Language. In J. Bradshaw, editor, Software Agents. MIT Press, 1997.
FIPA. The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. At http://www.fipa.org, 2001.
Fuxman, A., Giorgini, P., Kolp, M., and Mylopoulos, J. “Information Systems as Social Structures”, in Proceedings of the Second International Conference On Formal Ontologies for Information Systems, FOIS’01, Ogunquit, USA, Oct. 2001.
Gomes-Casseres, B. The Alliance Revolution: The New Shape of Business Rivalry, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1996.
Gotel, O. Contribution Structures for Requirements Engineering. Ph.D Thesis. Department of Computing, Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine, London, U.K., 1996.
IBM. Patterns for E-business. At http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/patterns, 2001.
Iglesias, C. A., Garijo, M. and Gonzáles, J. C. “A Survey of Agent-Oriented Methodologies”, in J. P. Muller, M. P, Singh, and A. S. Rao (Ed), Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures and Languages (ATAL-98), July 2–8, 1998, LNAI, Springer-Verlag, 1999
Kinny, D., Georgeff, M. and Rao, A. “A Methodology and Modelling Technique for Systems of BDI Agents”, in W. Van Der Velde and J. Perram, editors., Agents Breaking Away: Proceedings of the Seventh European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World MAAMAW’96, (LNAI Volume 1038). Springer-Verlag, 1996.
Kolp, M., Castro, J., and Mylopoulos J. “A Social Organization Perspective on Software Architectures”, in Proceedings of the First International Workshop on From Software Requirements to Architectures, STRAW’01, pages 5–12, Toronto, Canada, May 2001.
Kolp, M., Giorgini, P., and Mylopoulos, J. “A Goal-Based Organizational Perspective on Multi-Agents Architectures”, in Proceedings of the Eightth International Workshop on Intelligent Agents: Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, ATAL’01, Seattle, USA, Aug.2001.
Labrou, Y., Finin, T. and Peng, Y. “The Current Landscape of Agent Communication Languages,” Intelligent Systems, 14(2):45–52, 1999.
Letier, E. and van Lamsweerde, A. “Agent-Based Tactics for Goal-Oriented Requirements Elaboration”, in Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2002, Orlando, Florida, May 19–25, 2002.
Mylopoulos, J., Borgida, A., Jarke, M., Koubarakis, M. Telos: “Representing Knowledge About Information Systems,” ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 8 (4), Oct. 1990, pp. 325–362.
Mylopoulos, J and Castro, J. Tropos: “A Framework for Requirements-Driven Software DDevelopment”, J. Brinkkemper, A. Solvberg (eds.), Information Systems Engineering: State of the Art and Research Themes, Springer-Verlag, pp. 261–273, June 2000.
Mylopoulos, J., Kolp, M. and Castro, J. “ UML for Agent-Oriented Software Development: The Tropos Proposal”, in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference On the Unified Modeling Language UML’01, Toronto, Canada, Oct. 2001.
Odell, J., Parunak, H. V. D. and Bauer, B. “Extending UML for Agents”, in Proceedings of the Second International Bi-Conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems, AOIS’00, pages 3–17, Austin, USA, July 2000.
Ramesh, B. and Jarke, M. “Towards Reference Models For Requirements Traceability.” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 27, pp. 58–93, Jan. 2001.
Scott, W. R. Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, Upper Saddle River, N.J., Prentice Hall, 1998.
Shaw, M., and Garlan, D. Software Architecture: Perspectives on Emerging Discipline. Prentice Hall, 1996.
Toranzo, M and Castro, J. A “Comprehensive Traceability Model to Support the Design of Interactive Systems”, in WISDOM’99-International Workshop on Interactive System Development and Object Models, 1999, Lisboa. 1999. Also included in Nunes, N., et al, Interactive System Design and Object Models In: International Workshop on Interactive System Development and Object Models, 1999, Lisboa. ECOOP’99-Workshop Reader. London: Springer Verlag-Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1999. v.1743. p.267–287.
Toranzo, M. A Framework to Improve Requirements Traceability (in Portuguese: Um Framework para Melhorar o Rastreamento de Requisitos). Ph.D thesis, Centro de Informática daUniversidade Federal de Pernambuco-UFPE, Brazil, 2002.
Wood, M. and DeLoach, S. A. “An Overview of the Multiagent System Engineering Methodology”, in the First International Workshop on Agent-Orientes Software Engineering (AOSE-2000), June, 10, 2000-Limerick. Ireland
Wooldridge, M. “Intelligent Agents,” in G. Weiss, editor. Multiagent Systems, the MIT Press, April 1999.
Wooldridge, M., Jennings, N. and Kinny D. “The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analyis and Design,” Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2000.
Yu, E. and Mylopoulos, J., “Understanding ‘Why’ in Software Process Modeling, Analysis and Design,” in Proceedings Sixteenth International Conference on Software Engineering-ICSE, Sorrento, Italy, May 1994.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Castro, J., Pinto, R., Castor, A., Mylopoulos, J. (2003). Requirements Traceability in Agent Oriented Development. In: Garcia, A., Lucena, C., Zambonelli, F., Omicini, A., Castro, J. (eds) Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems. SELMAS 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2603. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-35828-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-35828-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-08772-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-35828-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive