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