The context of this paper is given through a software engineering approach that uses Petri nets as executable code. We apply the particular understanding that Petri nets are not only used to model systems for design purposes but also to implement system components. Following this approach, we develop complex Petri net-based software applications according to the multi-agent paradigm. Agent-internal as well as agent-spanning processes are implemented directly as (high-level) Petri nets. These nets are essential parts of the resulting software application – alongside other parts (operational and declarative ones), which are implemented using traditional ways of programming. One of our goals is to open our Petri net-based agent framework Mulan/Capa so that multi-agent applications can communicate and interact with other systems – especially with Web-based applications. With this intention, we present a gateway solution to enable Petri net-based applications to access Web services as well as to offer Web services to other applications: the WebGateway. In addition to describing the WebGateway extension itself, we use its presentation to demonstrate the practicability of the Petri net-based software engineering approach in general. We emphasize the benefit of having Petri net models serve as conceptual models that progressively refine the constructed system from simple models to well-defined specifications of the systems. This improves the understanding of the systems.

The context of this paper is given through a software engineering approach that uses Petri nets as executable code. We apply the particular understanding that Petri nets are not only used to model systems for design purposes but also to implement system components. Following this approach, we develop complex Petri net-based software applications according to the multi-agent paradigm. Agent-internal as well as agent-spanning processes are implemented directly as (high-level) Petri nets. These nets are essential parts of the resulting software application – alongside other parts (operational and declarative ones), which are implemented using traditional ways of programming. One of our goals is to open our Petri net-based agent framework Mulan/ Capa so that multi-agent applications can communicate and interoperate with other systems – especially with Web-based applications. For this cause, we present a gateway solution to enable Petri net-based applications to access Web services as well as to offer Web services to other applications: the WebGateway. Besides describing the WebGateway extension itself, we use its presentation to demonstrate the practicability of the Petri net-based software engineering approach in general. We emphasize two benefits: (1) Petri net models serve as conceptual models that progressively refine the constructed system from simple models to welldefined specifications of the systems. This improves the understanding of the systems. (2) Having essential parts of the software system being implemented with Petri nets allows to carry out (partial) verification of our application code by means of standard formal methods from the field of Petri net theory.

Many publications in the last years point out the benefit of combining software agents and Web services. These approaches are mainly based on W3C compliant Web services and try to integrate them into FIPA compliant agent systems. The major obstacles are mismatches in service description and communication. This paper presents a Gateway architecture for connecting software agents and RESTful Web services based on JSON communication. To keep the communication transparent the Gateway translates the message encodings in both ways without any restrictions for the participating platforms. Instead of translating and offering machine-readable service descriptions, this approach puts the focus on human-machine interactions with software agent services. For this purpose we provide a Javascript framework to support the developer to create dynamicWeb pages that act as human-readable service descriptions and also as service invocation application. Moreover, with the help of this approach it is possible to create a Web-based and agent-oriented graphical user interface.

Modern, collaborative software development projects are highly supported by a variety of tools. Aside from the pure code development that is nowadays well supported by integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Eclipse, also other activities receive increasing attention in the matter of tool support. Recent improvements in tool support for source code management (SCM), process management and documentation management are driven by the changing demands of increasing distribution and agility of development projects. Moreover, the integration of tool support systems into integrated project management environments (IPMEs) increase the usefulness of each emerging tool support, especially for agile approaches. The Petri net-based agent-oriented software engineering (Paose) is highly influenced by agile methods and combines the agile concepts with aspects from model driven development. We have achieved increased efficiency by the adoption of IPMEs into the Paose development approach. However, the introduced tool set integration lacks in support for the model driven part of Paose, i.e. the tool integration for graphical (model-based) source code is missing. In this work we present an approach for an appropriate tool support of agile methods and model driven development. As a prototypical implementation of the concepts we present a Web service-based framework and plugin-based extension for Redmine as representative of open source IPMEs, which is currently in use in the context of the Paose approach.

Distributed network security is an important concern in modern business environments. Access to critical information and areas has to be limited to authorised users. The Herold research project aims to provide a novel way of managing distributed network security through the means of agent-based software. In this paper we present the first models, both conceptual and technical that have been produced in this project. Furthermore we examine the Paose development approach used within the project and how it contributes to Herold.