Methodologies for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering by Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm

Course description:

Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) is a key factor for introducing agent-based systems to the industry as an engineering approach. At present, the majority of existing agent applications are developed in an ad-hoc fashion: little or no rigorous design methodology, limited specification of the requirements, ad-hoc design of agents and of multi-agent systems as a whole, and little attention to non-functional requirements such as mobility, scalability, performance issues, and standards. By adopting AOSE principles, one gains the advantages of an organized development process. One of the basic principles of AOSE is using a methodology for developing agent applications. Hence, this course will concentrate on methodologies, their applicability and their use. In particular, the goals of this course are the following:

• Introduce basic concepts of software engineering in the context of agent-based systems.
• Introduce the motivation for using agent-oriented software engineering.
• Introduce the field of agent-oriented methodologies.
• Present several agent-oriented methodologies.
• Compare exiting agent-oriented methodologies.
• Discuss implementation issues of agents and MAS and their relationship to agent-oriented methodologies.

Tutor bio:

Onn Shehory is a researcher at IBM research labs in Israel. He is also an adjunct faculty at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Dr. Shehory has been studying, designing and developing agent-based systems for 12 years. He has a comprehensive knowledge of the leading technologies in the field, and has published dozens of papers, of which several ones directly address the topics of the proposed course. Dr. Shehory has also given several tutorials at international scientific meetings, including EASSS 2002, EASSS 2003, EASSS 2004, EASSS2005, AAMAS 2002, AAMAS 2003, and AAMAS 2004.

Arnon Sturm is a faculty member at Ben-Gurion University. Arnon has 10 years of teaching experience, including agent-oriented courses. His research concentrates on the topics of the proposed course. Arnon has published several papers on these topics. Prior to his studies, Arnon has gained extensive experience in developing software systems in the industry. He also served as a member of a software engineering team that addressed problems similar to those addressed by the proposed course. Dr. Sturm has also given several tutorials at international scientific meetings, including EASSS 2003 and AAMAS 2003.