A framework for designing, modeling and analyzing agent based software systems

The agent paradigm is gaining popularity because it brings intelligence, reasoning and autonomy to software systems. Agents are being used in an increasingly wide variety of applications from simple e-mail filter programs to complex mission control and safety systems. However, there appears to be very little work in defining practical software architectures, modeling and analysis tools that can be used by software engineers. This should be contrasted with object-oriented paradigm that is supported by models such as UML and CASE tools that aid during the analysis, design and implementation phases of object-oriented software systems. We develop a framework and extensions to UML to address this need. Our approach is rooted in the BDI formalism, but stresses the practical software design methods instead of reasoning about agents. In this paper we describe our preliminary ideas.