Engineering Open Complex Agent Systems: A Case Study

Open complex agent systems (OCAS) are becoming increasingly important in constructing problem-solving systems for enterprise applications. are challenging because they present very high system complexities involving human users and interactions with a changing environment. The existing agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) approaches have trouble in engineering OCAS because of a number of deficiencies, e.g., lacking the capability of handling system dynamics analysis. This paper introduces an effective AOSE approach, i.e., organization- and service-oriented system analysis and design (OSOAD). It is used to extract and model system members and design a real-life OCAS system called financial trading rule automated development and evaluation (F-Trade). Through the case studies of visual and formal modeling and design of major organizational members, relations, and subsystems in F-Trade, this paper demonstrates the effective mechanisms and capabilities of the OSOAD approach. System implementation and evaluation results further show that OSOAD provides comprehensive AOSE support for engineering real-world open complex agent organizations.