A Methodology to Evaluate Agent Oriented Software Engineering Techniques

Systems using software agents (or multi-agent systems, MAS) are becoming more popular within the development mainstream because, as the name suggests, an agent aims to handle tasks autonomously with intelligence. To benefit from autonomous control and reduced running costs, system functions are performed automatically. Agent-oriented considerations are being steadily accepted into the various software design paradigms. Agents may work alone, but most commonly, they cooperate toward achieving some application goal(s). MAS's are components in systems that are viewed as many individuals living in a society working together. From a SE perspective, solving a problem should encompass problem realization, requirements analysis, architecture design and implementation. These steps should be implemented within a life-cycle process including testing, verification, and reengineering to proving the built system is sound. In this paper, we explore the various applications of agent-based systems categorized into different application domains. A baseline is developed herein to help us focus on the core of agent concepts throughout the comparative study and to investigate both the object-oriented and agent-oriented techniques that are available for constructing agent-based systems. In each respect, we address the conceptual background associated with these methodologies and how available tools can be applied within specific domains