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Multi-agent Systems: A Software Architecture Viewpoint

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Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

Abstract

Studies in agent-oriented software engineering address the merit of agents and multi-agent systems as a software architecture style, though only in part. MAS software architecture styles are of interest to both the MAS and the software engineering communities. This chapter provides an introduction to these software architectures. As we demonstrate, MAS implementations spanning across decades have several common architectural characteristics, despite different design and implementation details.

An important question associated with MAS development is whether MAS constitute an appropriate solution for a computational problem at hand, and if so, what type of MAS should be preferred for that solution? Preferably, this question better be answered early on, to prevent the use of MAS as a solution approach where simpler, more efficient solutions apply. MAS should be considered among an array of alternative solution approaches. To assist system designers in their assessment of MAS as a solution approach to their problem, we present architectural properties of MAS and we demonstrate these properties by example.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In object-based systems, a request for a service s from a service provider a would be performed by calling a method of a’s. Also, a public method of an object o 1 can be activated by another object o 2, and o 1 is not assumed to have control over this activation.

  2. 2.

    FIPA stands for Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents [23]. FIPA provides a specification for agent-based applications including, among other specifications, an ACL called FIPA-ACL and interaction protocols.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM—Haifa Research Lab, Haifa, Israel

    Onn Shehory

  2. Department of Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Arnon Sturm

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  1. Onn Shehory
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  2. Arnon Sturm
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Correspondence to Onn Shehory .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Haifa Research Laboratory, Haifa, Israel

    Onn Shehory

  2. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Arnon Sturm

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Shehory, O., Sturm, A. (2014). Multi-agent Systems: A Software Architecture Viewpoint. In: Shehory, O., Sturm, A. (eds) Agent-Oriented Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54432-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54432-3_4

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