Volume 66, Issue 1, 15 April 2007, Pages 71–86
Special Issue on the 5th International Workshop on System/Software Architectures (IWSSA’06)
Edited By L. Chung and N. Subramanian
Designing and managing evolving systems using a MAS product line approach ☆
- a University of Seville, E.T.S.I. Informática, Dpto. de Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos, Avda. de la Reina Mercedes s/n, Sevilla, 41.012, Spain
- b NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Information Systems Division, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
- c School of Computing and Mathematics, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ulster, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland, BT37 0QB, United Kingdom
- Received 2 April 2006
- Revised 6 September 2006
- Accepted 13 October 2006
- Available online 21 December 2006
Abstract
We view an evolutionary system as being a software product line. The core architecture is the unchanging part of the system, and each version of the system may be viewed as a product from the product line. Each “product” may be described as the core architecture with some agent-based additions. The result is a multiagent system software product line. We describe an approach to such a software product line-based approach using the MaCMAS agent-oriented methodology. The approach scales to enterprise architectures as a multiagent system is an appropriate means of representing a changing enterprise architecture and the interaction between components in it. In addition, we reduce the gap between the enterprise architecture and the software architecture.
Keywords
- Multiagent systems product lines;
- Enterprise architecture evolution;
- Swarm-based systems
References
- [1]
- S. Brueckner, H.V.D. Parunak, Resource-aware exploration of the emergent dynamics of simulated systems, in: Proceedings of Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems, AAMAS, 2003, pp. 781–788
- [2]
Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications
Addison-Wesley (2000)
- [3]
Objects, Components, and Frameworks with UML: The Catalysis Approach
Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA (1999)
- [4]
First class feature abstractions for product derivation
IEE Proceedings — Software, 151 (4) (2004), pp. 187–198
- [5]
- K. Kang, S. Cohen, J. Hess, W. Novak, A. Peterson, Feature-oriented domain analysis (foda) feasibility study, Technical Report CMU/SEI-90-TR-021, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, November 1990
- [6]
Role modeling for agent system analysis, design, and implementation
IEEE Concurrency, 8 (2) (2000), pp. 34–41
- [7]
Specifications and their use in defining subtypes
Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications, ACM Press (1993), pp. 16–28
- [8]
- J. Odell, FIPA, The FIPA agent UML web site, since 2003. Available at www.auml.org
- [9]
The role of roles in designing effective agent organisations
,in: A. Garcia, C.L.F.Z.A.O.J. Castro (Eds.), Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems, LNCS, vol. 2603, Springer-Verlag, Berlin (2003), pp. 27–28
- [10]
Representing social structures in UML
J.P. Müller, E. Andre, S. Sen, C. Frasson (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Autonomous Agents, ACM Press, Montreal, Canada (2001), pp. 100–101
- [11]
- J. Peña, On improving the modelling of complex acquaintance organisations of agents. A method fragment for the analysis phase. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Seville, 2005
- [12]
Towards interaction protocol operations for large multi-agent systems
Proceedings of the 2nd Int. Workshop on Formal Approaches to Agent-Based Systems, LNAI, FAABS 2002, NASA-GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA, vol. 2699, Springer-Verlag (2002), pp. 79–91
- [13]
Multiagent system product lines: Challenges and benefits
Communications of the ACM, 49 (12) (2006), pp. 82–84
- [14]
- J. Peña, M.G. Hinchey, A. Ruiz-Cortes, P. Trinidad, Building the core architecture of a NASA multiagent system product line, in: 7th International Workshop on Agent Oriented Software Engineering 2006, Hakodate, Japan, in: LNCS, May 2006 (in press)
- [15]
Software Product Line Engineering: Foundations, Principles and Techniques
Springer (September 2005)
- [16]
Working with Objects: The OOram Software Engineering Method
Manning Publications (1996)
- [17]
Experiences applying formal approaches in the development of swarm-based space exploration systems
International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 8 (6) (2006), pp. 587–603
- [18]
- C. Rouff, A. Vanderbilt, M. Hinchey, W. Truszkowski, J. Rash, Formal methods for swarm and autonomic systems, in: Proc. 1st International Symposium on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, ISoLA, Oct 30–Nov 2, Cyprus, 2004
- [19]
- C.A. Rouff, W.F. Truszkowski, J.L. Rash, M.G. Hinchey, A survey of formal methods for intelligent swarms, Technical Report TM-2005-212779, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, 2005
- [20]
Mixin layers: an object-oriented implementation technique for refinements and collaboration-based designs
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 11 (2) (2002), pp. 215–255
- [21]
Developing multiagent systems: The GAIA methodology
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 12 (3) (2003), pp. 317–370
Copyright © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.