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Agent-based systems are one of the most vibrant and important areas of research and development to have emerged in information technology in recent years, underpinning many aspects of broader information society technologies [82].

In this chapter we give an overview of the work that has been carried out on the development of agent-oriented modeling languages. These languages are intended to assist first in gaining an understanding of a particular system, and, secondly, in designing it.

In order to determine the quality of a modeling language explicitly, it is necessary to state its quality criteria. In the following we will define the general quality criteria of MAS modeling languages based on our analysis of the existing agent-oriented modeling languages (provided in Chapter 2), but also coming out of more than 10 years of our experience in the area of software modeling.

In this chapter we discuss the main motivational and technical aspects which influenced our design of AML, and we describe the overall language architecture and its extensibility mechanisms.

In order to properly understand AML, it is necessary to understand its underlying concepts. This chapter provides the reader with a description of the fundamental concepts used to describe an abstract metamodel of a MAS, referred to as the [44]. The intention is not to provide a comprehensive metamodel for all aspects and details of a MAS (such as detailed architectural design, system dynamics, or operational semantics), but rather to explain the concepts that were used as the underlying principles of AML and influenced the design of comprised modeling constructs. The presented conceptual MAS metamodel is used as a basis for the design of the AML metamodel described in Part III.

This chapter describes the principles of modeling systems by AML. Formation of the AML modeling mechanisms, expressed by the language’s metamodel and notation, comes out of the concepts from the AML conceptual MAS metamodel expressed by means of the (extended and customized) modeling constructs of UML. Therefore the main, immediate sources for designing AML language were firstly, its conceptual model (see Chapter 5) and secondly, the UML 2.0 Superstructure [104].

In addition to the work aimed directly at fulfilling the stated goals, i.e. to develop an agent-oriented modeling language, we also made an effort to bring AML into practice and to disseminate our ideas in the community of software developers and engineers. Practically, we were engaged in the following activities: This chapter provides a summary of these activities.

This chapter specifies presentation options for some UML elements in order to provide more intuitive and comprehensive notation. This alternative notation is then commonly used in next chapters to describe specific modeling elements of AML.

The overall package structure of the AML metamodel is depicted in Fig. 9-1.

The package defines the metaclasses used to model architectural aspects of multi-agent systems.