A distributed cooperative agents architecture for software development

Abstract

This paper presents a distributed cooperative agents architecture for software development using a frame-and-rule oriented requirements language (FRORL). FRORL is a logic-based requirements specification language and serves as multiple roles for representing knowledge, for interface language between cooperative agents and knowledge and data bases, and for knowledge communications among distributed cooperative intelligent agents. The distributed cooperative agents environment includes a frame-and-rule oriented requirements specifications language, an object-oriented specification acquisition methodology, the knowledge bases for software development using the paradigm of intelligent and cooperative information systems, and intelligent agents for all phases of software life cycle. All the software agents for software development are either logically or geographically distributed over network environment. The specifications acquisition methodology is used to guide software developers in performing object-oriented modeling of application problem domains. The system is designed to support rapid prototyping for validation of specifications in multiple abstraction layers through frame hierarchies. The specifications represented in FRORL can be transformed into various kinds of traditional or object-oriented programming languages.