Propagating AUML Protocols to Detailed Design.

The interaction between agents is a key aspect of multi-agent systems. AUML sequence diagrams are commonly used to specify these interactions between agents in terms of interaction protocols . Whilst most of the popular agent oriented software engineering methodologies such as Prometheus, Tropos, O-MaSE, INGENIAS and GAIA support AUML protocol specifications in the design, the supportive tools do not provide any mechanisms for ensuring that the detailed design, and consequently the implementations, faithfully follow these protocols. In this paper, we show how AUML protocol specifications in the Prometheus methodology can be automatically propagated to the detailed design of the methodology by creating appropriate artefacts. The approach is general to all design methodologies that follow the BDI model of agents. We empirically show that the manual translation of protocols to the detailed design even for a simple AUML protocol can be a tedious and error-prone task for even relatively experienced users. The evaluation shows that our automated approach address these issues to a large extent.