Formal agent-oriented modeling with UML and graph transformation

Abstract

The agent paradigm can be seen as an extension of the notion of (active) objects by concepts like autonomy and cooperation. Mainstream object-oriented modeling techniques do not account for these agent-specific aspects. Therefore, dedicated techniques for agent-oriented modeling are required which are based on the concepts and notations of object-oriented modeling and extend these in order to support agent-specific concepts. In this paper, an agent-oriented modeling technique is introduced which is based on UML notation. Graph transformation is used both on the level of modeling in order to capture agent-specific aspects and as the underlying formal semantics of the approach. Concepts of the concurrency theory of graph transformation systems following the double-pushout approach are exploited in order to formalize the relation between global requirements specification by means of sequence diagrams, and implementation-oriented design models where graph transformation rules specify the agents’ local operations.