ADELFE 2.0

Abstract

ADELFE is a French acronym that means “Toolkit for Designing Software with Emergent Functionalities” (“Atelier de DEveloppement de Logiciels à Fonctionnalité Emergente” in French). ADELFE methodology is dedicated to applications characterized by openness and the need of the system adaptation to an environment. Its main goal is to help and guide any designer during the development of an Adaptive Multi-agent System (AMAS). An AMAS is characterized by the following points: it is plunged into an environment and composed of interdependent agents, each agent carries out a partial function and the agents, organization during runtime makes the system realize an emergent function. Actually, an agent is locally cooperative, i.e. it is able to recognize cooperation failures called Non-cooperative Situations (NCS, which could be related to exceptions in classical programs) and treat them.

ADELFE includes five Work Definitions that were initially inspired from the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and gathers 21 activities, producing or refining 12 work products. These products are aggregating modelling diagrams or structured or free text. ADELFE, which is a Model-Driven (model-centred) development method, is not hardly dependent on Domain Specific Modelling Languages (DSML) but currently the recommendation is to use UML2 for general activities and to use AMASML (AMAS Modelling Language) and SpeADL (Species-based Modelling Language) for specific activities appearing in Analysis, Design or Implementation phases.