The Design And Implementation Of APL Graphical Development Platform Based On Eclipse

Multi-Agent technology has showed its enormous potential and value in the supply chain management and many other fields. Nowadays, people mainly focus agent model on BDI and its evolutionary architecture. As the matter of agent engineering, although some companies and organizations have set up some standards, as well as the corresponding agent development tools, using model-driven development method to realize agent application system also has considerable difficulties.Based on the APL agent system, the paper designs an APL graphical development platform. According to the agent structure, it reconstructs the agent model and establishes Ecore meta-model. Then based on the model framework generated by EMF, it implements the user interface with Eclipse and GEF technology. Agent editor is in the form of Multi-Page editor, sets the internal linkages among the components. Agent elements are defined in the Eclipse property pages. Finally this application releases in the form of RCP. Users can set Agent elements and their attributes in graphical manner, and use the menu action to generate the APL file. Modeling agent with EMF practices the model-driven development of Eclipse. Meanwhile, editing APL to develop agent system is also a model-driven development process. The Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) makes model and user interface loosely coupled, reduces the system complexity when upgrading and maintaining. Users can manage the agent by APL file. Also, combining with APL parser and JADE platform, users are able to supervise their creating and running.