Designing agents for implementation using multiple development environments

This paper describes the analysis and design of an application based on the metaphor of software agents. The agent paradigm was used in this context to address problems emanating from the fragmented nature of tasks involved in the e-procurement of construction products. Since none of the existing agent development environments could be used in isolation to deliver an entire application with the desired functionality, it became necessary to conceptualize the proposed prototype as linked modules that could be developed separately using different tools. The objective of this paper is to show how programming the prototype as a collection of sub-systems that need to interact with one other presented an opportunity for exploiting object-oriented thinking. More specifically, it underscores the advantages inherent in using the abstraction provided by multi-agent Systems Engineering methodology (MaSE) and its associated agentTool environment in the analysis and design of components of a community of agents.