An Automated Approach to Manage MAS-Product Line  Methods

Sara Casare*, Tewfik Ziadi+, Anarosa A. F. Brandão**, Zahia Guessoum+


* LTI,  University of São Paulo, Brasil
+LIP6, University Paris-Sorbonne, France
** Computing Engineering and Digital Systems Department University of São Paulo, Brasil

Multiagent systems (MAS) can vary in several ways: by involving different agents, distinct interaction patterns, various forms of agent organizations and environments. In this paper we present an approach that takes advantage of these intrinsic variability to increase reuse of MAS artifacts. In order to do that we take advantage of Software Product Lines principles to empower MAS reuse by explicit handling variability concerning both  MAS software products, like agent and organization source code, and method artifacts, as MAS development methods. To illustrate our approach we present a case study involving the derivation of methods on demand for developing MAS product lines based on SPL state-of-art techniques and two popular methods for agent-oriented software engineering, Gaia and Tropos.

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