Today, when
computing is
pervasive and deployed over a range of devices by a multiplicity of
users, we
need to develop computer software to interact with both the
ever-increasing
complexity of the technical world and the growing fluidity of social
organizations.
The Art of
Agent-Oriented
Modeling presents a new conceptual model for
developing software systems that are open, intelligent, and adaptive.
It
describes an approach for modeling complex systems that consist of
people,
devices, and software agents in a changing environment (sometimes known
as
distributed sociotechnical systems). The authors take an agent-oriented
view,
as opposed to the more common object-oriented approach.
Thinking in
terms of
agents (which they define as the human and man-made components of a
system),
they argue, can change the way people think of software and the tasks
it can
perform.
The book
offers an integrated
and coherent set of concepts and models, presenting the
models at three levels of abstraction corresponding to a
motivation layer (where the purpose, goals,and requirements of the
system are described), a design layer, and an implementation
layer. It compares platforms by implementing the same models in four
different
languages; compares methodologies by using a common example; includes
extensive
case studies; and offers exercises suitable for either class use or
independent
study.
Leon
S. Sterling is currently Dean of the Faculty of Information and
Communication Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, Australia, and a Honorary Professorial Fellow at the
University of Melbourne. He is the coauthor of The Art of Prolog
(second edition, MIT Press, 1994) and the editor of The Practice of
Prolog (MIT Press, 1990). Kuldar
Taveter is Professor and Head of the Software Engineering Chair
in the Department of Informatics at Tallinn University of Technology,
Estonia.