Dissertation
| Author | Lars Braubach |
| Tutor | Winfried Lamersdorf |
| Title | Architekturen und Methoden zur Entwicklung verteilter agentenorientierter Softwaresysteme |
| Abgabe am | 24.01.2007 |
| Abstract | The importance of distributed systems is steadily increasing especially in the
context of actual trends such as the inclusion of everyday objects into computer
networks. The construction of such kind of systems is a demanding and complex
task that naturally leads to new kinds of problems due to inherent system properties
such as the high dynamics, heterogeneity and flexible interactions. These
problems should be addressed not on application level but on software paradigm
level in order to avoid reinventing generic solutions. In contrast to established
paradigms such as object-orientation that do not offer adequate concepts for distributed
applications currently agent-orientation is seen as promising approach
for closing this conceptual gap as it offers natural description means for distributed
applications. Despite the evident advantages of agent orientation this way
of thinking could not yet gain sustainable acceptance in practice mainly due to
the heterogeneity of the research field and the accompanying inconsistent and
insufficiently matured approaches.
Therefore, the primary objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the
usability and usage of the agent paradigm for software engineering. For the effective
and efficient creation of agent applications two essential influence factors
have been identified in this work: the methodological support and the properties
of available agent frameworks. The conceptual foundation of agent frameworks
are agent architectures as they influence the agent view available for software
developers. The agent view in this respect determines to which degree the vital
agent characteristics such as reactivity and proactivity can be used. The BDI
model of agency exhibits several advantages compared to other agent architectures
and makes it an especially promising starting point for agent frameworks.
Nevertheless, the BDI architectures conceived so far, also have inherent weaknesses
that are one important point for the improvements in this work. The key
point of this work consists in the reduction of the conceptual gap between the
philosphical view of the BDI model and its software technological interpretation
within a new agent architecture that supports the two-phase BDI practical reasoning
process. The new architecture additionally ensures with its underlying
conceptual and technical extensibility that further aspects such as emotional
behaviour control can be integrated easily.
The newly conceived architecture is further concretized for direct software
implementation and has been realized within the Jadex agent framework. The
suitability for everyday use of the framework and the underlying architecture is
demonstrated by numerous usages in the academic as well as in the industrial
reasearch field. Additionally it is shown theoretically and practically that a
methodological development in the context of actual BDI methodologies of agent
applications is supported and promoted by Jadex.
This dissertation is available as book from publisher Lulu.com |
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