Abstract
From the point of view of software engineering, multi-agent systems are complex distributed application systems with a number of new properties, such as openness, dynamics, mobility and adaptivity. In this article, agents and agent systems are analysed from the point of view of software architecture. They are modelled in an object-oriented way, a novelty being the explicit modelling of connectors as building blocks to couple agents. Hierarchically structured sample architectures for classes of multi-agent systems can be given by the abstraction of existing agent applications and by using object-oriented principles. The article provides examples of sample architectures and their relations with distributed artificial intelligence and sociology. The advantages and disadvantages of agent technology are also discussed.
This article is the written version of a talk given during the workshop “Multi-agent Systems” held in Tutzingen in June 1999.
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Horn, E. (2001). Agent Models of Software Technology. In: Saam, N.J., Schmidt, B. (eds) Cooperative Agents. Theory and Decision Library, vol 32. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1177-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1177-7_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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