Meta-models, models, and model transformations: Towards interoperable agents

Abstract

Services provide an universal basis for the integration of applications and processes that are distributed among entities, both within an organization and across organizational borders: This paper presents a model-driven approach to design interoperable agents in service-oriented architectures (SOA). The approach provides a foundation for how to incorporate autonomous agents into a SOA using principles of model-driven development (MDD). It presents a metamodel (AgentMM) for a BDI-agent architecture and relates AgentMM to a platform-independent model for SOAs (PIM4SOA). In this paper we mainly concentrate our discussions on the service and process aspects of SOA and how transformations to agent technology would look like. We argue that this mapping allows the design of generic agent systems in the context of SOAs that are executable in an adaptive and flexible manner. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.