Malaca: A component and aspect-oriented agent architecture

  • Authors:
  • Mercedes Amor;Lidia Fuentes

  • Affiliations:
  • Dpto. Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computación, ETSI Informática, Universidad de Málaga, Boulevard Louis Pasteur S/N, Campus de Teatinos, E29071 Málaga, Spain;Dpto. Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computación, ETSI Informática, Universidad de Málaga, Boulevard Louis Pasteur S/N, Campus de Teatinos, E29071 Málaga, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Information and Software Technology
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The production of maintainable and reusable agents depends largely on how well the agent architecture is modularized. Most commercial agent toolkits provide an Object-Oriented (OO) framework, whose agent architecture does not facilitate separate (re)use of the domain-specific functionality of an agent from other concerns. This paper presents Malaca, an agent architecture that combines the use of Component-based Software Engineering and Aspect-Oriented Software Development, both of which promote better modularization of the agent architecture while increase at the architectural level. Malaca supports the separate (re)use of the domain-specific functionality of an agent from other communication concerns, providing explicit support for the design and configuration of agent architectures and allows the development of agent-based software so that it is easy to understand, maintain and reuse.