Agent based software development

the characteristics perceived as distinctive for the agent based applications, taking into
account their purpose, context, users, problematic. . . , justifying your decision.

Agent Technology, foundations applications and markets
Michael J. Wooldridge
London ,UK1998
Page 304

Classification of Software Agents
Classification refers to the study of types and entities. There are severaldimensions to classify existing software agents
In this paper we classify agents, along several ideal and primary
characteristics that agents should exhibit. We identify three characteristics:
autonomy, learning, and cooperation, which we have discussed in Section 1.
Autonomy refers to the characteristic that an agent can operate on
its own without the need for human guidance. In other words,an agent has a set
of internal states and goals, it acts in such a manner to meet its goals on behalf of
the user. In order to do so, an agent has to be proactive in the sense that it has the
ability to take the initiative rather than acting simply in response to its
environment [15]. Cooperation with other agents is necessary to accomplish a
complicated task. In order to cooperate however,an agent must posses a social
ability that allows it to interact with other agents. Finally, an agent is intelligent if
it is able to learn and sense as it acts and reacts to its external environment. These
three characteristics of agents are used to derive some types of agents to include
in our classification as shown in Figure 1.

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Uses:
Industry domains, supply chain management and b2bexchanges.
Multi-agent systems are applied in the real world to graphical applications such as computer games. Agent systems have been used in films.[7]. Other applications include transportation, logistics, graphics, GIS as well as in many other fields. It is widely being advocated for use in networking and mobile technologies, to achieve automatic and dynamic load balancing, high scalability,and self-healing networks.
Context:
Modern computing is based mostly in interconection of computers, now are needed distributed open and dynamic systems. The need for autonomus components which can respond dynamically to continous changing circusnstances and which try to achieve objectives without the user information, characteristics needed in the new computational envorioment.Characteristics:
Agent based systems are active autonomous and modularized
Active: producing information, adding value.
Autonomous and modularized mean having a human-like behavior, colaborate in work groups in order to produce services. An agent is an expert in a clearly defined domain contributing to the work group.

MAS systems, also referred to as "self-organized systems", tend to find the bestsolution for their problems "without intervention". The main feature which is achieved when developing multi-agent systems, if they work, is flexibility, since a multi-agent system can be added to, modified and reconstructed, without the need for detailed rewriting of the application. These systems also tend to be rapidly self-recovering and failure proof, usually due to the heavy redundancy ofcomponents and the self managed features, referred to, above.
Goal Oriented Agents
The agent concept is regarded as a powerful software development paradigm, well suited to address the complexity of todays large software systems. It allows to view a system as being composed of autonomous interacting entities which pursue their own goals and act in a rational manner. The internal state and decisionprocess of agents is therefore modelled in an intuitive manner following the notion of mental attitudes. Goal orientation means that, instead of directly requesting the agents to perform certain actions, the developer can define more abstract goals for the agents, thereby providing a certain degree of flexibility on how to achieve the goals
The agent-based systems have no overall system controller...