AL-Rafidain Journal of Computer Sciences and Mathematics

Abstract

In recent years, computer systems that make use of software agents are increased, due to the increased size and complexity of these systems, as well as, because the benefits provided by agents to facilitating the developing process and requirements representation for these systems. Traditional software engineering methodologies are not enough to be used in the development of such systems, because the special characteristics for software agent, therefore there are many proposed Agent Based Software Engineering (ABSE) methodologies to support software engineers in the agents based systems development, However, some of  them were designed without adhering to all main stages of software development life cycle, as well as they are lacking for representation of most agents features, additionally, most of them are not represents the implementation phase or represented it but in unclear and unpractical manner.
To address these issues, this research is investigated the existing methodologies and diagnose its strengths and weaknesses, then construct a proposed ABSE methodology depending on combining of strengths for existing methodologies, and delete or modify its weaknesses. This methodology is covered all main stages of software development life cycle, and dealing with problems in the existing methodologies. The requirements phase and part of the design phase were rely on Tropos methodology, whereas the implementation phase and part of the analysis and design phases were rely on MASD methodology, these stages has been modified by deleting its weaknesses and add some other novel techniques.
To improve the new proposed methodology, a running agent based e-commerce system has been developed depending on stages of this methodology, and implement it with Java programming language and XML using the Jadex platform