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doi:10.1016/j.engappai.2004.11.018 
Copyright © 2004 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
Adding debugging support to the Prometheus methodology
Received 22 November 2004;
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Abstract
This paper describes a debugger which uses the design artifacts of the Prometheus agent-oriented software engineering methodology to alert the developer testing the system, that a specification has been violated. Detailed information is provided regarding the error which can help the developer in locating its source. Interaction protocols specified during design, are converted to executable Petri net representations. The system can then be monitored at run time to identify situations which do not conform to specified protocols. A process for monitoring aspects of plan selection is also described. The paper then describes the Prometheus Design Tool, developed to support the Prometheus methodology, and presents a vision of an integrated development environment providing full life cycle support for the development of agent systems. The initial part of the paper provides a detailed summary of the Prometheus methodology and the artifacts on which the debugger is based.
Keywords: Agent software engineering methodology; Automated debugging; Petri nets; Automated software engineering support; Prometheus
Article Outline
- 1. Introduction
- 2. System specification
- 2.1. Actors and their use cases
- 2.2. Development of scenarios
- 2.3. Identification of goals
- 2.4. System interface—percepts, actions, data
- 2.5. Grouping into functionalities
- 3. Architectural design
- 3.1. Deciding on the agent types
- 3.2. Agent interactions
- 3.3. System overview
- 4. Detailed design
- 4.1. Identifying capabilities
- 4.2. Agent processes using activity diagrams
- 4.3. Plans, events and data
- 4.4. Finalising details
- 5. Debugging using design artifacts
- 5.1. Debugging agent interactions using protocol specifications
- 5.2. Converting from protocol specifications to Petri nets
- 5.2.1. Translation process
- 5.2.2. ALTernative
- 5.2.3. PARallelism
- 5.2.4. OPTional
- 5.3. Monitoring and reporting
- 5.4. Debugging plan interrelationships
- 6. The Prometheus design tool
- 6.1. Developing Prometheus artifacts with PDT
- 6.1.1. System specification
- 6.1.2. Architectural design
- 6.1.3. Detailed design
- 6.2. Checking for consistency and completeness
- 6.3. Integrating debugging and testing into PDT
- 6.4. Future developments
- 7. Related work
- References
