Agent-driven integration architecture for component-based software development

Abstract

Developing large and complex information systems with the use of off-the-shelf software components has become fundamental in today's enterprise information systems development. Such an approach does not require to develop the system from scratch but rather to adequately integrate third party software packages into the system under development. In this context, this paper introduces an architectural pattern for components integration. This will be materialized through a multi-agent system (MAS) that will offer an abstraction layer over the components. The MAS will be in charge of the functional decomposition and coordination of the user requests with components at disposal. The originality of the proposed architecture is issued of its configurability with respect to the project-specific business logic and its flexibility to adapt to the changing requirements and environment. The architectural description goes beyond a pure system design by incorporating a description over multiple complementary dimensions. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.