Multi-agent applications in a context-aware global software development environment

Multi-agent applications in a context-aware

global software development environment

Alberto Barbosa Biasão, Helio Henrique L. C. Monte-Alto

Elisa Hatsue Moriya Huzita, Lucas de Oliveira Teixeira

1 State University of Maringá, Informatics Department

Distributed Software Development Laboratory

Summary

Global Software Development – GSD

Context-awareness

Context-awareness and MAS

ContextP-GSD

OntoDiSEN

Case study: Time Zone

DiSEN User Rating

DiSEN Agency

Conclusions and future works

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Global Software Development – GSD

World has been watching the distribuction of

software development among countries. Industries

are reallocating production unities upon

decentralized location, where specialized workforce

can be promptly found, and there are possibilities of

taking advantage from local politics and economics

[Vardi et al, 2006].

DiSEN (Distributed Software Engineering

Environment) [Pascutti, 2002]

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Context-awareness

The term refers to the ability of an entity to be aware

of context information and use this information to

adapt its behavior accordingly. [Laitakari e Pakkala,

2008].

Context: any information that can be used to

characterize the situation of entities that are

considered relevant to the interaction between a

user and an application, including the user and the

application themselves [Dey et al, 2001]

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Context-awareness and MAS

Decentralized decisions about the context of the

environment

Agents reduce complexity on distributed systems:

autonomy, situatedness and high-level interactions

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ContextP-GSD

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ContextP-GSD’s architecture

OntoDiSEN

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ContextP-GSD’s Case Study: Time Zone

Fragment of time zone inference rule set (generic form):

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𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑟 ∧ 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑟, ? 𝑡 ∧𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟𝐼𝑠𝐼𝑛𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑙 ∧ ℎ𝑎𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑙, ? 𝑡2 ∧ ? 𝑡 ≠ ? 𝑡2 ⇒

𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝐴𝑠𝑦𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙, ? 𝑝 ;

𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑟 ∧ 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑟, ? 𝑡 ∧𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟𝐼𝑠𝐼𝑛𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑙 ∧ ℎ𝑎𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑙, ? 𝑡 ⇒𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛(𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝐴𝑠𝑦𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙, ? 𝑝 ) ∧𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛(𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑆𝑦𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑝, ? 𝑝 );

DiSEN User Rating

Support allocation of human resources to software

projects

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DiSEN User Rating overview

DiSEN Agency

Framework / architecture for knowledge-based MAS

Encapsulates solutions for performance and scalability issues

Focus on context-aware distributed systems

Scalability, performance and reuse

Motivation:

Concurrent access to the knowledge base

Knowledge distribution

Low coupling with the storage technology

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DiSEN Agency

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DiSEN Agency’s architecture

Conclusions

ContextP-GSD advantages:

Improves efficiency on users’ communication

Flexibility and rationality: ontology and inference rules

MAS approach: context-awareness in a distributed system

DiSEN Agency:

Encapsulates solutions for scalability and performance issues

Can be used in various application domains:

GSD

Semantic web

Collaborative systems

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Future works

Improvements:

Better integration with DiSEN environment

Knowledge distribution / partitioning

Performance and scalability issues on persistence operations

and consistency check

Semantic repositories evaluation

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Multi-agent applications in a context-aware

global software development environment

Alberto Barbosa Biasão

Helio Henrique L. C. Monte-Alto

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Questions? Suggestions?