The First International Workshop on

AGENT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (AOSE-2000)

June 10, 2000 - Limerick, Ireland

LATEST

A schedule for the workshop is now available.

INTRODUCTION

Software engineers have derived a progressively better understanding of the characteristics of complexity in software. It is now widely recognised that interaction is probably the most important single characteristic of complex software. Software architectures that contain many dynamically interacting components, each with their own thread of control, and engaging in complex coordination protocols, are typically orders of magnitude more complex to correctly and efficiently engineer than those that simply compute a function of some input through a single thread of control.

Unfortunately, it turns out that many (if not most) real-world applications have precisely these characteristics. As a consequence, a major research topic in computer science over at least the past two decades has been the development of tools and techniques to model, understand, and implement systems in which interaction is the norm. Indeed, many researchers now believe that in future, computation itself will be understood as chiefly as a process of interaction.

Since the 1980s, software agents and multi-agent systems have grown into what is now one of the most active areas of research and development activity in computing generally. There are many reasons for the current intensity of interest, but certainly one of the most important is that the concept of an agent as an autonomous system, capable of interacting with other agents in order to satisy its design objectives, is a natural one for software designers. Just as we can understand many systems as being composed of essentially passive objects, which have state, and upon which we can perform operations, so we can understand many others as being made up of interacting, semi-autonomous agents.

This recognition has led to the growth of interest in agents as a new paradigm for software engineering. In this workshop for ICSE2000 we will seek to examine the credentials of agent-based approaches as a software engineering paradigm, and to gain an insight into what agent-oriented software engineering will look like.

PUBLICATION OF PROCEEDINGS

An informal proceedings will be printed and distributed at the workshop. Revised papers from the workshop will be formally published by Springer-Verlag shortly after the workshop is held.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

We welcome the submission of all papers on aspects of agent oriented software engineering, but particularly the following:

We are particularly interested in papers that address themselves to the following questions:
  1. The "OO mindset" contains about half a dozen key concepts -- class, instance, encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and so on. In your view, what are the key concepts in the "agent-oriented" mindset? If you had to identify just one, then what would it be and why? How do we identify what should and should not be modelled/implemented as an agent? What are the key features you look for in a problem that suggest an agent-based solution?

  2. Over the past few years, there has been an increasing trend in the object-oriented community towards the development of "agent-like" features. Examples include distributed objects (CORBA, RMI), applets, mobile object systems, and coordination mechanisms and languages. This trend is likely to continue at least in the short term. Given this, how does an agent-oriented software engineering view sit in relation to other software paradigms, in particular, object-oriented development? What are the key attributes of agent-oriented development that make it unique and distinctive?

  3. What is the impact of agent-oriented languages and tools on the software development process? How can legacy software architectures be integrated with agent or multi-agent oriented applications? Which specification, design, implementation, maintenance, or documentation systems and strategies have to be adopted in order to deal with agent-oriented issues?

  4. Agent-based solutions are not appropriate to all applications. One of the keys to the success of agent-oriented software engineering is therefore to identify the application requirements that indicate an agent-based solution. If you have a particular approach to agent-oriented development, then describe this approach, and give a *short* case study of a realistic problem that you have tackled using it. Describe the major software engineering principles that you learnt from this experience, and outline the software engineering issues that your experience have raised.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Those wishing to participate in the workshop should submit an original research paper of up to 5000 words (approximately 13 pages maximum) to the workshop chair, to arrive no later than 25 February 2000. Electronic submission in PostScript or PDF is mandatory. The first page should include the full name and contact details (including email, full postal address, and telephone number) of at least one author.

IMPORTANT DATES

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

 Paolo Ciancarini (chair)  
   University of Bologna, Italy 
   email ciancarini@cs.unibo.it

 Michael Wooldridge (co-chair) 
   University of Liverpool, UK 
   email M.J.Wooldridge@csc.liv.ac.uk

REGISTRATION AND ACCOMODATION FOR AOSE-2000

Delegates to AOSE-2000 must register for the workshop using the ICSE registration form. Our understanding is that it is possible to regsiter for a workshop without registering for the main conference as well. Full information on registration and accomodation booking information is available online at:

http://www.ul.ie/~icse2000/reginfo.htm

ABOUT ICSE 2000

ICSE is the premier international conference on software engineering, and was attended by 900 delegates in 1999. By holding AOSE-2000 at ICSE, we hope to build bridges between the software engineering and agents communities, to the benefit of both. For travel information to Limerick, see

http://www.ul.ie/~icse2000/travel.html

PROGRAM COMMITTEE