Using Model Driven Architecture to Develop
Multi-Agent Systems

Mohamed Elammari and Zeinab Issa
Faculty of Information Technology, University of Benghazi, Libya

 

Abstract: In recent years, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) had started gaining widespread acceptance in the field of information technology. This prompted many researchers to attempt to find ways to facilitate their development process, which typically includes building different models. The transformation of system specifications into models and their subsequent translation into code is often performed by relying on unstandardized methods, hindering adaptation to rapid changes in technology. Furhtermore, there is a big gap between the analysis, the design and the implementation in the methodologies of multi-agent systems development. On the other hand, we have seen that the top-down Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach can be used to provide an efficient way to write specifications, develop applications and separation of business functions and application from the technical platform to be used. In this work, we propose using the MDA architecture for developing MAS. We demonstrate several different approaches, resulting in a variety of methods for developing MAS. This, in turn, increases the flexibility and ease of the development of MAS, and avoids any previously imposed restrictions.

Keywords: MDA, MAS, web ontology language, XMI.

 

Received May 4, 2011; accepted July 28, 2011; published online August 5, 2012

  

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