Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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Fig. 1.
a) depicts how B
OCHICA
relates to the abstraction layers defined by MDA (
Computa-
tional Independent Models (CIM)
,
Platform Independent Models (PIM), Platform Specific Mod-
els (PSM)
). b) visualizes the idea behind the B
OCHICA
core DSL and 3rd party extensions.
that agent technology can embody concepts like goals, roles, and organizational struc-
tures in order to build modeling languages of the next higher level of abstraction.
3
Framework Overview
TheroleofB
OCHICA
in the overall software development process is to provide the
means for capturing the design decisions of a SUC and bridging the gap between de-
sign and code. Figure 1 a) depicts how the framework is aligned to the abstraction layers
defined by MDA. The agent-oriented modeling language underlying B
OCHICA
defines
the concepts which are available for modeling a SUC (see Figure 1 b). So called
base
transformations
are responsible for mapping the concepts of the B
OCHICA
core DSL
to different agent platforms. In real world applications, an agent platform usually does
not exist in isolation. As an agent platform is integrated into a larger execution environ-
ment, the core DSL gets extended with additional concepts to address the features of
that execution environment. Moreover, a so called
extension transformation
defines ad-
ditional conceptual mappings for the new concepts which complement an existing base
transformation. The underlying idea is to reuse large parts of the existing infrastructure.
The separation into a core modeling language and 3rd party extensions prevents the core
DSL from getting cluttered with highly specialized concepts that are only relevant for a
small number of applications (and thus, would make the language unusable over time).
In the following, we provide a brief overview of the B
OCHICA
core DSL and introduce
an iterative adaptation process for integrating conceptual extensions into B
OCHICA
.
3.1
Core DSL
The B
OCHICA
core DSL is based on the
Domain Specific Modeling Language for Mul-
tiagent Systems
(D
SML
4M
AS
)[6].D
SML
4M
AS
is a platform independent graphical
modeling language and covers the core aspects of MAS, such as agents and organi-
zations, interaction protocols, goals, behaviors, deployment aspects, etc. Its abstract
syntax is defined by the
Platform Independent Metamodel for Agents
(P
IM
4A
GENTS
).
Object
Constraint
Language
2
(OCL)-based
constraints
are
used
for
validating
