message/uml 3

1.3 Outline and Contributions
The MESSAGE/UML methodology covers MAS analysis and design and is designed
for use in mainstream software engineering departments.
This article focuses on analysis of MAS using MESSAGE/UML.Section 2
describes the principal“knowledge level”agent-oriented MESSAGE concepts and
describes different views on the analysis model.Section 3 describes the MESSAGE
analysis process.Section 4 describes an analysis case study using the
MESSAGE/UML notation.The following diagram types are introduced:organisation,
goal,task,delegation,workflow,interaction and domain.All are extensions of UML
class diagrams,except for the task diagram,which extends the UML activity diagram.
The use of schemas to textually describe the concepts is also illustrated.
The contributions of MESSAGE are the agent knowledge level concepts,and the
diagrams for viewing these concepts in the analysis model that have been added to
UML.MESSAGE integrates into a coherent AOSE methodology that can be used by
mainstream software engineering departments some basic agent related concepts such
as organisation[11,15],role[12],goal[4]and task[13],that have so far been studied
in isolation.The case-study focuses on illustrating these new agent related concepts
and the new diagrams to visualise them.A complete case study can use existing UML
notation in addition to the new notation.
2.MESSAGE DESCRIPTION
2.1 Extending UML for Agent Modelling
UML is a convenient starting point for an agent-oriented modelling language for the
following reasons:
?UML is widely accepted as a de facto standard for object-oriented modelling,
many software engineers are trained in its use,and commercial software tools are
available to support it(some of which are extendable).
?The object-and agent-oriented paradigms are highly compatible.Agent-oriented
concepts can readily be defined in terms of object-oriented ones.
?UML is based on a meta-model(UML uses the MOF meta-modelling language
[3]),which makes it extendable[1].
The MESSAGE modelling language is related to UML as follows:
1.It shares a common metamodelling language(meta-metamodel)with UML and MOF
2.It extends the UML metamodel with’knowledge level’agent-oriented concepts.
A more complete description of the relationship between the MESSAGE metamodel
and the UML metamodel is given in[5].