| Agent Oriented Software Engineering poses several challenges to the traditional theory and practice of software engineering with the emergence of a variety of theories and tools proposed to deal with this challenge. Agent frameworks with formal foundations have an important role to play in this scenario by allowing analysis based on a mathematical model. It is our contention that the available frameworks and languages do not fulfill all aspects of agent-based system analysis and development. We perform a survey of available formal theories and tools for multi-agent systems and derive a strong motivation for a new formal framework to support agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). Several aspects of agent behavior in this framework have been inspired by the popular Belief-Desire-Intention model of cognitive agents. The new framework introduced concisely in the second half tackles the issues raised in the first half, including those regarding mobility, proactive behavior, organization, and inter-agent communication. |
