Skip to main content

A Definition of Exceptions in Agent-Oriented Computing

  • Conference paper
Engineering Societies in the Agents World VII (ESAW 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 4457))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The research on exception handling in Multi-Agent Systems has produced some advanced models to deal with ‘exceptional situations’. The expression ‘agent exception’ is however unclear across the literature, as it sometimes refers to extensions of traditional exception models in programming languages, and sometimes to organizational management mechanisms with distinct semantics. In this paper, we propose a definition of ‘agent exception’ to clarify the notion and justify that specific research is necessary on this theme. We detail properties of this definition, revisit the traditional vocabulary related to exception in software design, propose an adequate agent architecture, and identify some research issues. This work is aimed at federating the endeavors on the question of exception management for Agent-Oriented Computing.

This research is partially supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affair under the reference BFE/2006-484446G, Lavoisier grant program.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Goodenough, J.B.: Exception Handling: Issues and a Proposed Notation. Commun. ACM 18(12), 683–696 (1975)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Goodenough, J.B.: Structured exception handling. In: POPL 1975. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages, pp. 204–224. ACM Press, New York (1975)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Goodenough, J.B.: Exception handling design issues. SIGPLAN Not. 10(7), 41–45 (1975)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Parnas, D.L., Würges, H.: Response to undesired events in software systems. In: International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 437–446 (1976)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Stroustrup, B.: The C++ Programming Language. Addison-Wesley, London, UK (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Gosling, J., Joy, B., Steele, G., Bracha, G. (eds.): The JavaTM Language Specification, 3rd edn. Addison-Wesley, London, UK (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Klein, M., Dellarocas, C.: Exception handling in agent systems. In: Agents, pp. 62–68 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Tripathi, A., Miller, R.: Exception handling in agent-oriented systems. [38], pp. 128–146.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Miller, R., Tripathi, A.: The Guardian Model and Primitives for Exception Handling in Distributed Systems. IEEE Trans. Software Eng. 30(12), 1008–1022 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Xu, J., Romanovsky, A.B., Randell, B.: Coordinated Exception Handling in Distributed Object Systems: From Model to System Implementation. In: ICDCS, pp. 12–21 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Souchon, F., Dony, C., Urtado, C., Vauttier, S.: Improving Exception Handling in Multi-agent Systems. In: Lucena, C., Garcia, A., Romanovsky, A., Castro, J., Alencar, P.S.C. (eds.) Software Engineering for Multi-Agent Systems II. LNCS, vol. 2940, pp. 167–188. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Iliasov, A., Romanovsky, A.: Structured Coordination Spaces for Fault Tolerant Mobile Agents. [39], pp. 181–199.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Dony, C., Urtado, C., Vauttier, S.: Exception Handling and Asynchronous Active Objects: Issues and Proposal. [39], pp. 81–100.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Huberman, B.A., Hogg, T.: Communities of practice: Performance and evolution. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory 1, 73–92 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Feng, Y.D., Huang, G., Zhu, Y., Mei, H.: Exception Handling in Component Composition with the Support of Middleware. In: Nitto, E.D., Murphy, A.L. (eds.) SEM, pp. 90–97. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Dellarocas, C.: Toward Exception Handling Infrastructures in Component-based Software. In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Component-based Software Engineering (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Romanovsky, A.B.: Exception Handling in Component-Based System Development. In: COMPSAC, pp. 580–598. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Klein, M., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A., Dellarocas, C.: Using domain-independent exception handling services to enable robust open multi-agent systems: The case of agent death. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 7(1-2), 179–189 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Platon, E., Sabouret, N., Honiden, S.: Challenges for Exception Handling in Multi-agent Systems. In: Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems, pp. 45–50 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Mallya, A.U., Singh, M.P.: Modeling exceptions via commitment protocols. In: Autonomous Agents and Multi–Agent Systems, pp. 122–129. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Mallya, A.U.: Modeling and Enacting Business Processes via Commitment Protocols among Agents. PhD thesis, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Bernon, C., Camps, V., Gleizes, M.P., Picard, G.: Engineering Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems: the ADELFE Methodology. In: Agent-Oriented Methodologies. Whitestein Series in Software Agent Technologies, pp. 172–202. Idea Group Publishing, USA (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Brooks, R.: Intelligence without representation. Artificial Intelligence 47(1–3), 139–159 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Singh, M.P., Huhns, M.N.: Service–Oriented Computing: Semantics, Processes, Agents. Wiley, Chichester (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Longman, P. (ed.): Dictionary of Contemporary English. Pearson Longman (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Platon, E., Sabouret, N., Honiden, S.: Overhearing and direct interactions: Point of view of an active environment. In: Weyns, D., Parunak, H.V.D., Michel, F. (eds.) E4MAS 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3830, pp. 121–138. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  27. Platon, E., Sabouret, N., Honiden, S.: Environment Support for Tag Interactions. In: Environment for Multi–Agent Systems (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Hägg, S.: A Sentinel Approach to Fault Handling in Multi-Agent Systems. In: Dickson, L., Zhang, C. (eds.) Multi-Agent Systems Methodologies and Applications. LNCS, vol. 1286, pp. 181–195. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  29. Russell, S., Norvig, P.: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Weyns, D., Omicini, A., Odell, J.: Environment, First-Order Abstraction in Multiagent Systems. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 14(1), 5–30 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Drogoul, A., Corbara, B., Lalande, S.: MANTA: New Experimental Results on the Emergence of (Artificial) Ant Societies. In: Gilbert, N., Conte, R. (eds.) Artificial Societies: The Computer Simulation of Social Life, pp. 190–211. UCL Press, London (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Rao, A.S., Georgeff, M.P.: BDI Agents: From Theory to Practice. Technical report, Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Kakas, A.C., Mancarella, P., Sadri, F., Stathis, K., Toni, F.: The KGP model of agency. In: de Mántaras, R.L., Saitta, L. (eds.) ECAI, pp. 33–37. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Shah, N., Chao, K.M., Godwin, N., Younas, M., Laing, C.: Exception Diagnosis in Agent-Based Grid Computing. In: International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, pp. 3213–3219. IEEE, New York (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Weyns, D., Steegmans, E., Holvoet, T.: Towards Active Perception in Situated Multi-Agent Systems. Special Issue of the Journal on Applied Artificial Intelligence 18(8–9) (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Kushmerick, N.: Software agents and their bodies. Minds and Machines 7(2), 227–247 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Issarny, V.: Concurrent Exception Handling. [38], pp. 111–127.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Romanovsky, A., Dony, C., Knudsen, J.L., Tripathi, A.R. (eds.): Advances in Exception Handling Techniques. LNCS, vol. 2022. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  39. Dony, C., Knudsen, J.L., Romanovsky, A., Tripathi, A. (eds.): Advanced Topics in Exception Handling Techniques. LNCS, vol. 4119. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Gregory M. P. O’Hare Alessandro Ricci Michael J. O’Grady Oğuz Dikenelli

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Platon, E., Sabouret, N., Honiden, S. (2007). A Definition of Exceptions in Agent-Oriented Computing. In: O’Hare, G.M.P., Ricci, A., O’Grady, M.J., Dikenelli, O. (eds) Engineering Societies in the Agents World VII. ESAW 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4457. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75524-1_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75524-1_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-75522-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-75524-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics