Agent services-oriented architectural design of open complex agent systems

Architectural design is a critical phase in building agent-based systems. However, most of existing agent-oriented software engineering approaches deliver weak or incomplete supports for the architectural design of distributed and especially Internet-based agent systems. On the other hand, the emergence of service-oriented computing (SOC) brings in intrinsic mechanisms for complementing agent-based computing (ABC). In this paper, we investigate the dialogue between ABC and SOC and their integration in implementing architectural design. We synthesize them and develop the computational concept agent service, and build a new design approach called agent service-oriented architectural design (ASOAD). The ASOAD expands the contents and ranges of agent and ABC, and synthesize the qualities of SOC such as interoperability and openness with the performances of ABC like flexibility and autonomy. It is suitable for designing distributed agent systems and agent service-based enterprise application integration.