| Abstract: |
This document presents the MESSAGE
methodology for Agent Oriented Software Engineering.
Agent technology is gaining more and more
importance in the domain of telecommunication applications (e.g. EURESCOM P712, P815,
P704, P810, P845; ACTS projects KIMSAC, AMASE, ABROSE, CLIMATE). The concepts and
technology have been brought to a stage where they are useable in real applications, and
there is a growing understanding of how to apply them to practical problems. To exploit
this investment, the knowledge of where and how to employ agent-oriented ideas must become
part of the repertoire of skills of the EURESCOM partners’ software engineering
teams.
Software engineering (SE) methodologies
have proved to be successful in increasing speed to market of software development
projects, lowering the development cost and providing better quality. It is possible for
small teams to apply SE principles informally, but for large projects a well-defined
methodology is essential. Message is an attempt to combine all of the best features of
existing agent oriented software engineering (AOSE) methodologies while grounding
agent-oriented concepts in the same underlying semantic framework used by UML, the
standard Modelling language for Object Oriented Software Engineering. |
