Research On Agent-Oriented Modeling Language

Agent technology is a powerful software paradigm for developing complex systems. To conduct researches on agent-oriented modeling language will be helpful to analyze and design complex muti-agent system (MAS). Though a great number of agent-oriented modeling languages and methodologies have been proposed in the past years, there are few efforts in the following three aspects at least, which we believe are important to develop complex MAS. The first is the lack of method to explicitly model and analyze the environment in which MAS is situated. The second is the lack of natural way for modeling dynamic agents. The last is the lack of researches on the ontology of organization metaphor to guide the design of agent-oriented modeling languages and methodologies.This paper investigates the environment model of MAS, the dynamic role transition diagram and the ontology of organization abstraction. A scenario-based methodology for modeling and analyzing MAS environment is presented. The scenarios that developers identify are used as guidelines to elicit and analyze the environment model. Based on higher-level organization abstraction, we model MAS environment. We also present a role transition diagram to specify and analyze dynamic agents. The organization concepts and their relationships are investigated and an ontology based on organization abstraction is presented in order to guide the design of agent-oriented methodologies and modeling languages. We also develop a tool to model MAS, and a number of cases are studied in detail to show how to use our method and tool to develop MAS.