A Quantitative Study about Tardiness in Java-based Multi-agent Systems

Time constraints are designed as non-functional requirements which are implemented using programming language-dependent time schedulers. Multi-Agent System (MAS) applications are frequently developed using a Java-based agent platform. Thus, this Java-based MAS applications rely on native Java time schedulers. However, the Java documentation clearly states that there are no guarantees about the time accuracy during system execution. As a consequence, delays may occur at run time, and the correctness of the system execution can be compromised, which is even more critical in real-time or simulation applications. This paper presents a quantitative study on this issue, aiming to establish relationships between these delays and multi-agent paradigm abstractions. Such study is important to obtain data to indicate development solutions to mitigate problems that may arise from execution delays.