面向Agent软件工程是近年出现的一种新颖软件开发范型,它借助于Agent技术来支持软件系统的工程化开发,被视为是支持复杂软件系统开发的一种重要方法和手段,受到了学术界和工业界的高度关注和重视。尽管在过去十年多的时间里面向Agent软件工程的研究取得了诸多进展,但其技术潜力尚有待进一步发挥,走向大规模工业化应用仍面临诸多问题和挑战。在分析面向Agent软件工程产生背景和技术特点的基础上,从方法、过程和工具三个不同的角度,综述了面向Agent软件工程的研究现状,识别和分析了它当前所面临的一组关键挑战,展望和讨论了其未来的研究方向。
Agent-oriented software engineering is a novel software paradigm that is considered as an important approach to supporting the development of complex software systems based on agent technology.Many attentions had been paid by researchers in academic literature and practitioners in industry literature.In the past ten years,great progresses of agent-oriented software engineering has been made.However,there are still a great number of problems that should be solved before it moves to industry application and its potentials should be exploited extensively.After investigating the background and characteristics of agent-oriented software engineering,the paper overviewed the state-of-the-art of the researches on agent-oriented software engineering,identified and analyzed a number of key challenges of such technology,outlooked and discussed the future directions from technique,process and tool viewpoints.