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Formalizing the Reusability of Software Agents

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Engineering Societies in the Agents World IV (ESAW 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3071))

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Abstract

Since its conception, software engineering has been proposing various techniques and technologies addressing the problem of maximizing the reusability of software. The leading edge of such a research is component-based software engineering. This paper reviews agents and multiagent systems from the point of view of reusability and it provides a formalization of reusability that exploits some very basic agent-oriented concepts. In particular, we move from the lesson learned in component-based software engineering and we define a topmost level of reusability in terms of two long-debated concepts: semantic composability and semantic extensibility. Then, we formally define such concepts through goal delegation, and finally we discuss how a concrete, yet simple, agent model can approximate them.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AOT Lab, Parco Area delle Scienze 181/A, 43100, Parma, Italy

    Federico Bergenti

Authors
  1. Federico Bergenti
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna a Cesena, via Venezia 52, 47023, Cesena, Italy

    Andrea Omicini

  2. Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence,, Freyung 6/6, A-1010, Vienna, Austria

    Paolo Petta

  3. Intelligent Systems & Networks Group, Dept. of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, SW7 2BT, UK

    Jeremy Pitt

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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bergenti, F. (2004). Formalizing the Reusability of Software Agents. In: Omicini, A., Petta, P., Pitt, J. (eds) Engineering Societies in the Agents World IV. ESAW 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3071. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25946-6_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25946-6_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22231-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-25946-6

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