With this book, Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, together with further contributors, introduce the reader to various facets of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). They provide a selected collection of state-of-the-art findings, which combines research from information systems, artificial intelligence, distributed systems and software engineering and covers essential development aspects of agent-based systems. The book chapters are organized into five parts. The first part introduces the AOSE domain in general, including introduction to agents and the peculiarities of software engineering for developing MAS. The second part describes general aspects of AOSE, like architectural models, design patterns and communication. Next, part three discusses AOSE methodologies and associated research directions and elaborates on Prometheus, O-MaSE and INGENIAS. Part four then addresses agent-oriented programming languages. Finally, the fifth part presents studies related to the implementation of agents and multi-agent systems. The book not only provides a comprehensive review of design approaches for specifying agent-based systems, but also covers implementation aspects such as communication, standards and tools and environments for developing agent-based systems. It is thus of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who are interested in exploring the agent paradigm for developing software systems.

Domain engineering is a set of activities intended to develop, maintain, and manage the creation and evolution of an area of knowledge suitable for processing by a range of software systems. It is of considerable practical significance, as it provides methods and techniques that help reduce time-to-market, development costs, and project risks on one hand, and helps improve system quality and performance on a consistent basis on the other. In this book, the editors present a collection of invited chapters from various fields related to domain engineering. The individual chapters present state-of-the-art research and are organized in three parts. The first part focuses on results that deal with domain engineering in software product lines. The second part describes how domain-specific languages are used to support the construction and deployment of domains. Finally, the third part presents contributions dealing with domain engineering within the field of conceptual modeling. All chapters utilize a similar terminology, which will help readers to understand and relate to the chapters content. The book will be especially rewarding for researchers and students of software engineering methodologies in general and of domain engineering and its related fields in particular, as it contains the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on this topic.

With this book, Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, together with further contributors, introduce the reader to various facets of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). They provide a selected collection of state-of-the-art findings, which combines research from information systems, artificial intelligence, distributed systems and software engineering and covers essential development aspects of agent-based systems.

The book chapters are organized into five parts. The first part introduces the AOSE domain in general, including introduction to agents and the peculiarities of software engineering for developing MAS. The second part describes general aspects of AOSE, like architectural models, design patterns and communication. Next, part three discusses AOSE methodologies and associated research directions and elaborates on Prometheus, O-MaSE and INGENIAS. Part four then addresses agent-oriented programming languages. Finally, the fifth part presents studies related to the implementation of agents and multi-agent systems.

The book not only provides a comprehensive review of design approaches for specifying agent-based systems, but also covers implementation aspects such as communication, standards and tools and environments for developing agent-based systems. It is thus of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who are interested in exploring the agent paradigm for developing software systems.