MOBMAS - A methodology for ontology-based multi-agent systems development

摘要

“Agent-based systems are one of the most vibrant and important areas of research and development to have emerged in information technology in the 1990s” (Luck et al. 2003). The use of agents as a metaphor for designing and constructing software systems represents an innovative movement in the field of software engineering: “Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE)” (Lind 2000; Luck et al. 2003).This research contributes to the evolution of AOSE by proposing a comprehensive ontology-based methodology for the analysis and design of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). The methodology is named MOBMAS, which stands for “Methodology for Ontology-Based MASs”. A major improvement of MOBMAS over the existing agentorientedMAS development methodologies is its explicit and extensive support forontology-based MAS development. Ontologies have been widely acknowledged fortheir significant benefits to interoperability, reusability, MAS development activities(such as system analysis and agent knowledge modelling) and MAS operation (such asagent communication and reasoning). Recognising these desirable ontology’s benefits,MOBMAS endeavours to identify and implement the various ways in which ontologiescan be used in the MAS development process and integrated into the MAS modeldefinitions. In so doing, MOBMAS has exploited ontologies to enhance its MASdevelopment process and MAS development product with various strengths. Thesestrengths include those ontology’s benefits listed above, and those additional benefitsuncovered by MOBMAS, e.g. support for verification and validation, extendibility,maintainability and reliability. Compared to the numerous existing agent-orientedmethodologies, MOBMAS is the first that explicitly and extensively investigates thediverse potential advantages of ontologies in MAS development, and which is able toimplement these potential advantages via an ontology-based MAS development processand a set of ontology-based MAS model definitions.Another major contribution of MOBMAS to the field of AOSE is its ability to addressall key concerns of MAS development in one methodological framework. Themethodology provides support for a comprehensive list of methodological requirements,which are important to agent-oriented analysis and design, but which may not be wellsupportedby the current methodologies. These methodological requirements wereidentified and validated by this research from three sources: the existing agent-orientedmethodologies, the existing evaluation frameworks for agent-oriented methodologiesand conventional system development methodologies, and a survey of practitioners andresearchers in the field of AOSE. MOBMAS supports the identified methodologicalrequirements by combining the strengths of the existing agent-oriented methodologies(i.e. by reusing and enhancing the various strong techniques and model definitions ofthe existing methodologies where appropriate), and by proposing new techniques andmodel definitions where necessary.The process of developing MOBMAS consisted of three sequential research activities.The first activity identified and validated a list of methodological requirements for anAgent Oriented Software Engineering methodology as mentioned above. The secondresearch activity developed MOBMAS by specifying a development process, a set oftechniques and a set of model definitions for supporting the identified methodologicalrequirements. The final research activity evaluated and refined MOBMAS by collectingexpert reviews on the methodology, using the methodology on an application andconducting a feature analysis of the methodology.