Affiliations: ITC-Irst, Automated Reasoning Systems, Via Sommarive
18, Povo, 38050 Trento, Italy | IAG – Information Systems Research Unit – University
of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium | DIIGA, Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona,
Italy
Abstract: In the last few years, software applications are increased in
complexity and in stakeholders' expectations, principally due to new
Internet-centric application areas such as eBusiness, eGovernment, web
services, ubiquitous computing, and peer-to-peer networks. From a software
engineering point of view, such applications have brought in new challenging
requirements to deal with. Therefore, the paper aims to cope with complex
system development taking benefit from the use of an agent oriented software
engineering methodology, named Tropos. The paper focuses both on the
socially-driven approach of Tropos and on the agent capabilities
characterization, in order to build up an agent-based information system
prototype. Specifically, we revise and improve the Tropos architectural design
phase, motivating the need for two correlated dimensions: organization
styles based macro-level architectural design and social patterns based
micro-level architectural design. Moreover, we illustrate how the architectural
design phase drives and supports detailed design activities, e.g., agent
cooperation, by means of some agent specification abstractions.
Keywords: Intelligent agents, organizational architectures, social patterns, Tropos
