Formalizing the reusability of software agents

Abstract

Since its conception, software engineering has been proposing various techniques and technologies addressing the problem of maximizing the reusability of software. The leading edge of such a research is component-based software engineering. This paper reviews agents and multiagent systems from the point of view of reusability and it provides a formalization of reusability that exploits some very basic agent-oriented concepts. In particular, we move from the lesson learned in component-based software engineering and we define a topmost level of reusability in terms of two long-debated concepts: semantic composability and semantic extensibility. Then, we formally define such concepts through goal delegation, and finally we discuss how a concrete, yet simple, agent model can approximate them. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.