Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems: Research Issues and Practical Applications

Nowadays, engineering large—scale software systems means dealing with complex systems composed of pervasive software components that move around and adapt to nondeterministic and open environments, like the Internet, in order to achieve systems design goals through the coordination of autonomously distributed services. The agent metaphor, in particular software agents and multi—agent systems (MAS), constitutes a promising approach for covering most of the software development life cycle, fr...