T4 - HALF DAY
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Methodologies for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm

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ABSTRACT OF TUTORIAL



Agent-based systems are gradually moving from research labs to the
industry.  Consequently, there is an emergent need for an engineering
approach to develop such systems. A research discipline that addresses
this need is the Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE), which
aims at presenting an engineering approach for agent-based systems to
the industry.  This tutorial will provide an introduction to AOSE as
well as a motivation for its use. It will explain the use of AOSE
methods for building agent-based system. The tutorial will provide the
participant with an understanding of the AOSE concepts. The student
will study the approaches and streams within the AOSE community and
will be familiarized with several methods for specifying agent-based
systems. Additionally, the participant will be taught how to evaluate
and select a method for modeling agent-based system. The 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 field of agent-oriented modeling methods.
 ·Present several agent-oriented modeling methods.
 ·Provide criteria for evaluation of these methods.
 ·Evaluate and compare exiting modeling methods.
 ·Demonstrate the benefits of using agent-oriented modeling methods 
  in the development of  agent-based systems. 

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INTENDED AUDIENCE


The tutorial welcomes researchers that are interested in exploring the
field of agent-oriented methodologies. In addition, the tutorial
welcomes practitioners who are interested in adopting agent technology
as an engineering approach.

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BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED


The tutorial assumes that participants have some familiarity with
agent-based systems and basic software engineering knowledge.

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DETAILED OUTLINE


     1.	Introduction and background concepts:
           a. Goal and outline of the tutorial.
           b. Why do we need software engineering?
           c. What is agent-oriented software engineering is all about?
           d. The software lifecycle.
     2.	Towards agent-oriented software engineering:
	   a. Why do we need agent-oriented software engineering methodologies?
	   b. Key abstractions in agent-oriented software engineering.
	   c. Agents at different levels of abstractions.
     3.	Evaluation methods for agent-oriented methodologies:
	   a. What is a methodology?
	   b. How can we evaluate it?
     4.	Agent-oriented methodologies and their evaluation:
           a. GAIA
           b. AUML
           c. DESIRE
           d. OPM/MAS

     5.	Conclusions and questions


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BIOGRAPHY OF PRESENTERS

Onn Shehory

IBM Research Labs in Israel
Haifa (IL)
mailto: onn@il.ibm.com

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 10 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 a rich teaching and lecturing
experience. Since 1999, Dr. Shehory has taught several courses on
agent technology at three institutes (Carnegie Mellon, Technion and
Bar Ilan).

Arnon Sturm
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Haifa (IL)
mailto: sturm@techunix.technion.ac.il


Arnon Sturm is a doctoral student at the Technion - Israel Institute
of Technology.  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. Mr. Sturm has been tutoring
for 7 years including agent-oriented courses.

E-mail:  sturm@tx.technion.ac.il