Supporting Agent-Oriented Software Engineering for Data Mining Enhanced Agent Development

The emergence of Multi-Agent systems as a software paradigm that most suitably fits all types of problems and architectures is already experiencing significant revisions. A more consistent approach on agent programming, and the adoption of Software Engineering standards has indicated the pros and cons of Agent Technology and has limited the scope of the, once considered, programming ‘panacea’. Nowadays, the most active area of agent development is by far that of intelligent agent systems, where learning, adaptation, and knowledge extraction are at the core of the related research effort. Discussing knowledge extraction, data mining, once infamous for its application on bank processing and intelligence agencies, has become an unmatched enabling technology for intelligent systems. Naturally enough, a fruitful synergy of the aforementioned technologies has already been proposed that would combine the benefits of both worlds and would offer computer scientists with new tools in their effort to build more sophisticated software systems. Current work discusses Agent Academy, an agent toolkit that supports: a) rapid agent application development and, b) dynamic incorporation of knowledge extracted by the use of data mining techniques into agent behaviors in an as much untroubled manner as possible.