Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Multi-Agent Systems have been proposed as a suitable conceptual and technological framework for building information systems which operate in open, evolving, heterogeneous environments. Our research aims at proposing design techniques and support tools for developing such complex systems. In this paper we address the problem of better linking requirements analysis to detailed design and implementation in the agent-oriented methodology with the aim to address adaptability issues. In particular, we revisit the definition of agent capability in and refine the development process in order to point out how capability specification can result from the integration of various analysis strategies. We also show how fragments of an implementation can be generated automatically from an agent capability specification.

This paper describes an agent-oriented requirements engineering approach that combines informal models with formal specifications in the multiagent system specification formalism CASL. This allows the requirements engineer to exploit the complementary features of the frameworks. can be used to model social dependencies between agents and how process design choices affect the agents’ goals. CASL can be used to model complex processes formally. We introduce an intermediate notation to support the mapping between models and CASL specifications. In the combined -CASL framework, agents’ goals and knowledge are represented as their mental states, which allows for the formal analysis and verification of, among other things, complex agent interactions and incomplete knowledge. Our models can also serve as high-level specifications for multiagent systems.

Agent-oriented models are used in organization and information system modelling for providing intentional descriptions of processes as a network of relationships among actors. As such, they capture and represent goals, dependencies, intentions, beliefs, alternatives, etc., which appear in several contexts: business process reengineering, information system development, etc. In this paper, we are interested in the definition of a framework for the analysis of the properties that these models exhibit. Indicators and metrics for these properties are defined in terms of the model elements (e.g., actors, dependencies, scenario paths, etc.) Our approach is basically quantitative in nature, which allows defining indicators and metrics that can be reused in many contexts. However, a qualitative component can be introduced if trustable expert knowledge is available; the extent up to which quantitative and qualitative aspects are intertwined can be determined in every single case. We apply our proposal to the notation and we take as main case study a highly-intentional property, predictability of model elements.

Organizational modelling has been found to be very effective in facilitating the elicitation of requirements for organizational information systems. In this context, the * modelling framework has been used widely in research and – some – industrial projects. However, no empirical evaluation exists to-date to identify areas of strength as well as weaknesses of the framework. This paper presents the results of an empirical evaluation of * using industrial case studies. These were conducted in collaboration with an industrial partner who employs an object-oriented and model-driven approach for software development. The evaluation of * uses a feature-based framework. The paper reports on lessons learned from this experience, both in terms of strengths and detected weaknesses. The results of this evaluation can play an important role in guiding extensions of the * framework.

End-users who are nonprogrammers create web applications by using advanced web development tools. However, these tools are not supported by any methodological process which produces that web applications are of low quality. This paper presents an approach to bring web engineering principles to the end-user community. We complement the web engineering method OOWS with tools that allow end-users to develop web applications by: (1) describing web applications in terms of the end-users’ knowledge about the application domain, (2) automatically obtaining a web application prototype by means of the OOWS code generation strategy, and (3) personalizing the web application look and feel by simply selecting a design template. To achieve this, an ontology-based strategy is introduced to support end-users throughout the web application development. We also introduce a strategy that allows us to define domain-independent presentation templates.

A rapidly changing market leads to software systems with highly volatile requirements. These must be managed in a way that reduces the time and costs associated with updating a system to meet these new requirements. By externalizing volatile concerns, we can build a stepping-stone for future management of unanticipated requirements change. In this paper, we present a method for handling volatile concerns during early lifecycle software modeling. The key insight is that aspect-oriented techniques can be applied to modularize volatility and to weave volatile concerns into the base software artifacts.