Abstract
In Multi-Agent System (MAS), developers concentrate on creating design models and evolving them, from higher level models to lower level models, in several steps. Considerable part of MAS implementations is automatically produced from the design models. If a design model contains faults, they are passed to the generated implementations. Practical model validation techniques are required to discover and delete faults in abstract design models. In this paper, we introduce a formal approach for MAS design testing. It specifies a testing process that complements Multi-agent Systems Engineering (MaSE) methodology and strengthens the mutual relationship between UML and MAS. Besides, it defines a structured and comprehensive testing process for engineering software agents at the design level by providing a systematic way of converting the MAS design models to UML design diagram. Then a Petri Net (PN) diagram is generated from the UML models to simulate the behavior of the MAS system. Finally, because Petri Nets (PNs) are formal models, their analysis techniques can be applied to automatic MAS behavioral testing.
Highlights
Multi-Agent System (MAS) are increasingly taking over operations and controls in enterprise management, automated vehicles, and financing systems, assurances that these complex systems operate properly need to be given to their owners and their users (Nguyen, et al, 2010)
A conversion model is presented for adopting the MAS design/analysis models created based on MaSE methodology into standard Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0 models and the UML models are transformed to PNs for formal testing
The role sequence diagram in “Applying Use Cases” stage of MaSE analysis phase presents the communication between roles assigned to each agent
Summary
MAS are increasingly taking over operations and controls in enterprise management, automated vehicles, and financing systems, assurances that these complex systems operate properly need to be given to their owners and their users (Nguyen, et al, 2010) This calls for an investigation of suitable software engineering frameworks, including requirements engineering, architecture, and testing techniques, to provide adequate software development processes and supporting tools. In comparison with regular model-based approaches such as UML which are equipped with a rich set of model based testing technique, a typical AOSE methodology introduces several new design concepts and abstractions to software development. This makes the use of UML-based testing tools for checking the MAS internal behavior harder and sometimes impossible.
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