Complexity measures for software systems : towards multi-agent based software testing

Bringing together agents and other fields of software engineering might be difficult, as the advantages of agent technology are still not widely recognized. Effectiveness claims of agent-oriented software engineering are based upon the strategies for addressing complex systems. Agent technologies facilitate the automated software testing by virtue of their high-level decomposition, independency and parallel activation. The informal interpretations of qualitative agent theories are not sufficient to distinguish agent-based approaches from other approaches in software testing. In this paper, we do not just described the agent-based approach in software testing, also developed an evaluation framework for agent-oriented approach in software testing and proposed a multi-agent system for software testing. This paper therefore provides a timely summary and enhancement of agent theory in software testing, which motivates recent efforts in adapting concepts and methodologies for agent-oriented software testing (AOST) to complex systems, which has not previously done. The 'multi-modal' approach proposed here is to offer a definition for encompassing to cover the software testing phenomena, based on agents, at the preliminary level, yet sufficiently tight that it can rule out complex systems that are clearly not agent-based.