Holonic multiagent systems (HMAS) offers a promising software engineering approach for developing complex open software systems. However the process of building MASs and HMASs is mostly different from the process of building more traditional software systems and it introduces new design and development issues. This paper introduces an agent-oriented software process for engineering complex systems called ASPECS. ASPECS is based on a holonic organisational metamodel and provides a step-by-step guide from requirements to code allowing the modelling of a system at different levels of details using a suite of refinement methods. This paper details the entire ASPECS development process and provides a set of methodological guidelines for each process activity. A complete case study is also used to illustrate the methodology and detail associated notations. ASPECS uses UML as modeling language. Because of the specific needs of agents and holonic organisational design, the UML semantics and notation are used as reference points, but they have been extended.

Keywords: Agent Oriented Software Engineering -- Software Development Process -- Holonic Multiagent Systems -- Complex Hierarchical Systems

Authors:

• Massimo Cossentino
• Nicolas Gaud
• Vincent Hilaire
• Stéphane Galland
• Abderrafiâa Koukam