Post on 29-Jan-2016
Satellite MAS
Position Statement FOSE-MAS 2008 – Danny Weyns
Life on satellite MAS
When we engineer multi-agent systems (1)
• Do we ask ourselves the question why we select MAS as a solution in the first place? – What are the concrete motivations – what are
the tradeoffs?
• What about the typical non-functional (quality) concerns? – Usability, maintainability, …ility, budget, ….– How do they relate to real stakeholders
When we engineer multi-agent systems (2)
• What about integrating the MAS with its software environment? – Software programming environment,
frameworks, middleware, legacy systems, etc.
• What about the evaluation of the MAS architecture?– How well will the MAS achieve its functional
and quality goals?
When we engineer multi-agent systems (3)
• What is the impact of introducing MAS on an organization?– Correspondence of software architecture with
developing organization
• Why are we not really concerned with all these issues that are crucial in practice?
Challenges ahead
• Each of these issues provides a challenge for FOSE-MAS– Why (not) using a MAS architecture? – Qualities of MAS, tradeoffs– Integrating MAS with its software environment– Evaluation of MAS architectures
• Verification of system-wide properties of decentralized architectures
– Impact of MAS on the developing environment
Earth is calling satellite MAS
• To tackle the increasing problems of software systems, mainstream SE needs our expertise! – E.g. to develop self-managing systems
• Grounding MAS engineering in mainstream SE is a key to (industrial) adoption of MAS