The BOCHICA Framework for Model-Driven Agent-Oriented Software Engineering - Agents and Artificial Intelligence - page 156

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Fig. 2. This figure depicts the process for gradually adapting B OCHICA to a custom application
domain

P IM 4A GENTS models. Model validation on a platform independent level already pre-
vents many errors in early phases of a project. D SML 4M AS inherently possesses three
different abstraction layers. The macroscopic layer defines the organizational structures
of the SUC in terms of abstract goals, roles, interactions, and organizations. The mi-
croscopic layer defines agent types, behavior templates, concrete goals, etc. The de-
ployment layer specifies concrete deployment configurations (e.g. agent instances and
resources). The platform, domain, and methodology independent nature of D SML 4M AS
makes it the perfect language for building an extensible framework around it.

3.2 Iterative Adaptation

One of the main reasons in model-driven AOSE which causes design and code to di-
verge over time is that the modeling language is not expressive enough for capturing
all design decisions. This makes extensive manual code refinements necessary at the
platform level to address certain features of the target environment. To approach this
problem, we propose an iterative adaptation process to gradually tailor B OCHICA to
the needs of a custom application domain and execution environment (see Figure 2).
In the first iteration, the SUC is modeled using the core DSL of B OCHICA without any
conceptual extensions (step 1). An existing base transformation to a considered agent
platform is applied (step 2). In step (3), the engineer realizes that some concepts of the
execution environment cannot be addressed by the core DSL and/or the existing base
transformation. The mismatches are analysed in step (4) and so called bottom-up re-
quirements are collected. Finally, the new concepts and extension transformation are
introduced in step (5). The second iteration makes use of the made extensions so that
the gap between design and code is better closed. The adaptation process continues
until the framework fits the needs of the SUC. It is important to note that the idea of
the adaptation process is not to introduce arbitrary low-level concepts into B OCHICA .
The extensions should complement the core DSL where necessary so that the design
decisions can be captured. This task is not trivial and requires background on MDSD
as well as on the B OCHICA core DSL.