Bibliography

Tools for Testing, Debugging and Monitoring Multi-agent Applications

Lawrence Cabac and Till Dörges .
Tools for testing, debugging and monitoring multi-agent applications.
In Moldt et al. , Proceedings of the International Workshop on Petri Nets and Software Engineering (PNSE'07), pages 209-213.

While multi-agent systems and the underlying agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) approach clearly can be of advantage when designing distributed systems, it is generally a lot harder to control and monitor these kinds of applications due to the distribution of agents. Distributed multi-agent systems usually mean decentralized control and very dynamic operating conditions. This also means that conventional tools naturally fall short when being applied to multi-agent applications or are limited to internal and local introspection.
This paper presents two tools to address the issues encountered when testing, monitoring and debugging multi-agent applications, which are designed for and integrated into the Petri net-based multi-agent system development environment Mulan\,/\,Capa\,/\,Renew. One of the tools, the \emph{Mulan viewer}, deals with the introspection of agents and agent behaviors, while it also offers rudimentary features for controlling the agent-system. The \emph{Mulan sniffer} on the other hand places emphasis on tracing, visualizing and analyzing communication between all parts of the multi-agent application and even offers interfaces for more advanced methods of analysis, such as process mining.

BibTeX

@InProceedings{Cabac+07a,
  author =  {Cabac, Lawrence and D{\"o}rges, Till},
  title =  {Tools for Testing, Debugging and Monitoring Multi-agent
                  Applications},
  pages =  {209--213},
  year =  2007,
  crossref =  {Moldt+-e-07},
  keywords =   {inspection, analysis, Renew, plug-ins, multi-agent systems},
  abstract =   {While multi-agent systems and the underlying
                  agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) approach
                  clearly can be of advantage when designing distributed
                  systems, it is generally a lot harder to control and
                  monitor these kinds of applications due to the
                  distribution of agents.  Distributed multi-agent systems
                  usually mean decentralized control and very dynamic
                  operating conditions.  This also means that conventional
                  tools naturally fall short when being applied to
                  multi-agent applications or are limited to internal and
                  local introspection.
                  \par
                  This paper presents two tools to address the issues
                  encountered when testing, monitoring and debugging
                  multi-agent applications, which are designed for and
                  integrated into the Petri net-based multi-agent system
                  development environment Mulan\,/\,Capa\,/\,Renew.  One of
                  the tools, the \emph{Mulan viewer}, deals with the
                  introspection of agents and agent behaviors, while it
                  also offers rudimentary features for controlling the
                  agent-system.  The \emph{Mulan sniffer} on the other hand
                  places emphasis on tracing, visualizing and analyzing
                  communication between all parts of the multi-agent
                  application and even offers interfaces for more advanced
                  methods of analysis, such as process mining.},
}

@Proceedings{Moldt+-e-07,
  title =  {Proceedings of the International Workshop on {Petri} Nets
                  and Software Engineering (PNSE'07)},
  booktitle =  {Proceedings of the International Workshop on {Petri} Nets
                  and Software Engineering (PNSE'07)},
  editor =  {Moldt, Daniel and Kordon, Fabrice and van Hee, Kees and
                  Colom, Jos{\'e}-Manuel and Bastide, R{\'e}mi},
  month =  jun,
  year =  2007,
  publisher =  {Akademia Podlaska},
  address =  {Siedlce, Poland}
}