MODELING AND EXECUTING SOFTWARE PROCESSES

BASED ON INTELLIGENT AGENTS

elle

F. Aoussat

Computer Science Department/ Faculty of Sciences

SAAD DAHLAB University, BLIDA

BP 270, Blida, Algeria.

M. Ahmed Nacer

Computer Science Department/ Faculty of Electrical Engineering,

University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene,

BP 32, El-Alia 16123 Bab-Ezzouar Algeria

Keywords: Modeling software process, in

telligent agents, software process centered environment.

Abstract: This paper presents a new approach for modeling and executing

software processes based on the concept of

multi-agent systems. We introduce the modeling process as one of the most important goal of the agent, and

we use the concept of “intelligent agent” to give more flexibility when adapting software processes to

unexpected changes. This is possible thanks to the multiple capacities of the agent like autonomy and

reactivity.

1 INTRODUCTION

Multiple platforms (CORBA, COM, EJB…) have

been used for distributed software process

development. The distribution requires 1) a

performent interaction models that can be adapted to

all kinds of software process interactions and 2) a

dynamic software process model to support and to

handle all changes and unexpected events that can

happen in the environment.

The concept of the agent was used for the

devel

opment of environments that focus their efforts

on the execution aspects of software process models

using the agent characteristics of interactions

(communications, negotiations, cooperations …) and

actions. However, few works was focused on the

modeling aspect of software processes based agents

and unfortunately, the representative capacities of

the agents were less exploited.

This paper presents our approach for modeling

and e

xecuting software processes based on the

concept of multi-agent system. This approach allows

to modelize dynamic distributed software processes.

Thanks to the agent concept that has features of

autonomy , reactivity and proactiveness, we use the

concept of “intelligent agent” to give more

flexibility when adapting software processes to

unexpected changes, handling unexpected events,

managing exception, etc.

Section 2 presents a brief state of the art in the

dom

ain of process software development based

agents. Section 3 describes our approach for

modeling and executing software processes based

agents. We describe the architecture of our system

through the multiple interactions between the

software process agents and their internal structures.

We show how, in one hand, it is possible to use the

representative capacities for modeling the software

processes, in parallel with action and interaction

capacities; and, in an other hand, how to give more

autonomy to supervise software process execution.

2 SOFTWARE PROCESS

CENTERED ENVIRONMENT

BASED AGENTS

This study is based on the most important software

processes environments based agents: (Wang,

2000a), (Wang, 2001), (Wang, 2002), PEACE+

(Alloui, 1996) and ALLIANCE (Alloui, 2001a).

441

F. Aoussat M. and M. Ahmed Nacer M. (2005).

MODELING AND EXECUTING SOFTWARE PROCESSES BASED ON INTELLIGENT AGENTS.

In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - DISI, pages 441-444

 SciTePress

All the

Agents are

in charge

to manage

the software

process

and data

consistency

4 OUR APPROACH FOR

MODELLING AND EXECUTING

SOFTWARE PROCESS BASED

INTELLIGENT AGENTS

Our system is defined in terms of hierarchic

software process agents. We describe below their

roles, their multiple interactions and their internal

architectures. We consider three kinds of agents:

Task Agents: the role is to execute the activities

defined in the software process model. An execution

report is sent to a fragment agent.

Fragment Agents: Each fragment agent is localized

in one workspace and manages its associated

software process fragments. Its goals are to 1)

divide the software process fragments into

sequential tasks, 2) to initialize its task agents with

heir associated sequential tasks and 3) to synthesize

the execution results for the supervisor agent.

Supervisor agent: It is considered at the top of the

agent hierarchy and has the global vision of the

software process execution in all the workspaces;

this is to ensure the global software proxcess

consistency.

The supervisor agent, considered in the top of

the agent hierarchy, has a global vision of the

software process execution in all the workspaces;

this is to ensure the consistency of the global

software process.

The tasks agents, considered at the low

level, are in charge of executing the

different tasks regarding the software

process model. The decisions taken by a

task agent are locally and prior to its

workspace.

4.1 Internal architecture of

the software process agent

After the study of the well-known internal

architecture of the agents, we choose a modular

architecture (Ferber, 1997), (Jennings, 2000). This

architecture is suitable to our software process agent,

where many parallel functions are executed. An

agent architecture is modular and horizontal. Each

agent is composed of six modules that work in

parallel and in cooperation. Each module is

responsible of many internal tasks of the agent. This

is illustrated in fig 2.

Figure 2: Internal architecture of the software process agent

Communication

-Manage the heterogeinity of the

messages

Planning and decision’s

- Take decisions about negociations

and planing of the execution .

Knowledge base manager

-Manage the knowledge consistency

Realization and evaluation

-Execute the planified tasks

-Evaluate the results.

Resources and accointance

Update the state of ressources and

accointances

Software process manager

-Model the softawre process

-Introduce the changes

External Environment.

Interaction between agents of the same level (between neighboor).

Interaction master/slave (between level).

Interaction agent/human.

Task Agents :

Execute the tasks

of the software

process model

Fragment Agent :

Interprete and affect

the tasks to tasks agents.

Supervisor Agent :

Modelize and affect

the software process

fragments.

Responsible1

Redundancy.

Figure 1: Distribution of the software process

Responsible2

Work s

ace1 Work s

ace2

Human

resources

geographical

distribution.

Specialization.

Multiple

interaction flow

MODELING AND EXECUTING SOFTWARE PROCESSES BASED ON INTELLIGENT AGENTS

443

The modules of the agent software process can

be classified into two categories:

1- Modules to manage the internal function

of the agent: These modules are the

communication module, the knowledge base

management module, the resources and

accointance module.

The functions of these modules are the same

for the three kinds of the software process agent

(tasks, fragments and supervisor).

2- Modules for modeling and executing the

software process: The main goal is to manage the

software process modeling, planning, executing

and introducing process changes. These modules

are: software process manager module, planning

and decision module, the realization and evaluating

module.

The functions of these modules are various

according to the kind of the agent. For instance, the

main function of the fragment agent module is to

evaluate the execution results and to decide about

the needed changes if necessary. Each kind of

agent is responsible of a given fragment of

software process and has the responsibility to

manage its representation and the evolution of its

execution ( at the different levels of course).

5 CONCLUSION

This paper presents a new approach for modeling

and executing the software process using the multi-

agent concepts. A state of art, first done, on three

existing environments (CAGIS, PEACE+ and

ALLIANCE) shows that the priority of these

systems is at the execution level of the software

processes and not at the modeling level. The

capacities of the agents that can handle the

modeling level is being unexploited.

Our contribution is the development of a

software process environment based on the concept

of multi-agent system. An agent is, thus,

considered as a part of a software process. In that,

an agent allows not only the execution of the

assigned tasks, but also, a permanent control of the

modeling and the executing of the software

processes. The “intelligence” aspect in our system

reside in the possibility to force (anticipate) the

events that can be happened and, thus, to take a

pertinent decisions at a time.

The hierarchical structure designed in our

system seems beneficial thanks to the cooperative

aspects of the agent. The current work tends to the

development of process fragmentation techniques,

the evaluation techniques and the mobility of the

agents.

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