Abstract
Over the last five years several agent system development methodologies have been proposed and developed, with a number of them becoming well established and used beyond the group developing them. They all deal with similar concepts, but the notations used differ substantially. In this work we develop a standardized graphical notation for four prominent agent development methodologies, using principles of graphical notation suggested by Rumbaugh. We briefly illustrate the graphical design views produced in the different methodologies, on a conference management system example, using the standardized notation. We then discuss some of the similarities and differences on the basis of the design artifacts produced - which are now much more readily comparable than previously. This is a first step in being able to readily incorporate steps from different methodologies, depending on the needs of the application. It also helps to make the material more readily accessible to a wider audience.
We acknowledge the input of Paolo Giorgini in discussing and determining the notation presented, and AgentLink which organized the Technical Forum. Padgham and Winikoff acknowledge the support of The Australian Research Council and the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training, as well as Agent Oriented Software under grants LP0453486 and CG040014. Scott DeLoach acknowledges the support of the US National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0347545 and by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
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Padgham, L., Winikoff, M., DeLoach, S., Cossentino, M. (2009). A Unified Graphical Notation for AOSE. In: Luck, M., Gomez-Sanz, J.J. (eds) Agent-Oriented Software Engineering IX. AOSE 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5386. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01338-6_9
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