This thesis presents an approach to modeling Multi Agent Systems (MAS). A framework and its implementation are presented as an extension to .NET. A number of definitions of agents are evaluated for the purpose of a broad understanding of the term software agent. Software agent has been defined in MAS context and its characteristics are identified and implemented. Motivation factors for building framework for MAS have been discussed. A number of existing technologies are discussed and evaluated. A number of agent systems previously developed are also being discussed in the middle part of the thesis. A model software agent has been defined and its characteristics are divided in two basic categories essential and optional. Its implementation has been distributed into different components throughout the MAS framework. Some of these characteristics are jointly implemented by a number of components and others responsibility rest on the individual components. Detail working of the MAS framework (i.e. what to do, when to do) is explained as guide to develop MAS using MAS framework. The protocols followed by the framework components to make communication possible between them are discussed at components level. The required information for developing MAS using MAS framework are also discussed. It answers the why, when and how questions in regards to using MAS framework A case study on Dynamic Truck Scheduling (DTS) system is discussed, designed and implemented using the MAS framework. DTS System has been used as a prototype application to test and evaluate the framework. DTS also represents a model problem that can be answered by using MAS; complete in-depth details about the problem statement are discussed. It also discusses the design and implementation of the solution along with the test results of the framework. Possible future expansion is presented in light of a number of limitations known of the MAS framework. The code working behind the different components of the MAS framework is given in appendices. Some important standards of XML that are used to pass information between agents and MAS framework components are also given in the format of tables.

The main purpose of this research is to find an effective way to personalise information searching on the Internet using middleware search agents, namely, Personalised Search Agents (PSA). The PSA acts between users and search engines, and applies new and existing techniques to mine and exploit relevant and personalised information for users. Much research has already been done in developing personalising filters, as a middleware technique which can act between user and search engines to deliver more personalised results. These personalising filters, apply one or more of the popular techniques for search result personalisation, such as the category concept, learning from user actions and using metasearch engines. By developing the PSA, these techniques have been investigated and incorporated to create an effective middleware agent for web search personalisation. In this thesis, a conceptual model for the Personalised Search Agent is developed, implemented by developing a prototype and benchmarked the prototype against existing web search practices. System development methodology which has flexible and iterative procedures that switch between conceptual design and prototype development was adopted as the research methodology. In the conceptual model of the PSA, a multi-layer client server architecture is used by applying generalisation-specialisation features. The client and the server are structurally the same, but differ in the level of generalisation and interface. The client handles personalising information regarding one user whereas the server effectively combines the personalising information of all the clients (i.e. its users) to generate a global profile. Both client and server apply the category concept where user selected URLs are mapped against categories. The PSA learns the user relevant URLs both by requesting explicit feedback and by implicitly capturing user actions (for instance the active time spent by the user on a URL). The PSA also employs a keyword-generating algorithm, and tries different combinations of words in a user search string by effectively combining them with the relevant category values. The core functionalities of the conceptual model for the PSA, were implemented in a prototype, used to test the ideas in the real word. The result was benchmarked with the results from existing search engines to determine the efficiency of the PSA over conventional searching. A comparison of the test results revealed that the PSA is more effective and efficient in finding relevant and personalised results for individual users and possesses a unique user sense rather than the general user sense of traditional search engines. The PSA, is a novel architecture and contributes to the domain of knowledge web information searching, by delivering new ideas such as active time based user relevancy calculations, automatic generation of sensible search keyword combinations and the implementation of a multi-layer agent architecture. Moreover, the PSA has high potential for future extensions as well. Because it captures highly personalised data, data mining techniques which employ case-based reasoning make the PSA a more responsive, more accurate and more effective tool for personalised information searching.

Industrial software systems are becoming more complex with a large number of interacting parts distributed over networks. Due to the inherent complexity in the problem domains, most such systems are modified over time to incorporate emerging requirements, making incremental development a suitable approach for building complex systems. In domain specific systems it is the domain experts as end users who identify improvements that better suit their needs. Examples include meteorologists who use weather modeling software, engineers who use control systems and business analysts in business process modeling. Most domain experts are not fluent in systems programming and changes are realised through software engineers. This process hinders the evolution of the system, making it time consuming and costly. We hypothesise that if domain experts are empowered to make some of the system changes, it would greatly ease the evolutionary process, thereby making the systems more effective. Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) is seen as a natural fit for modeling and implementing distributed complex systems. With concepts such as goals and plans, agent systems support easy extension of functionality that facilitates incremental development. Further agents provide an intuitive metaphor that works at a higher level of abstraction compared to the object oriented model. However agent programming is not at a level accessible to domain experts to capitalise on its intuitiveness and appropriateness in building complex systems. We propose a model driven development approach for domain experts that uses visual modeling and automated code generation to simplify the development and evolution of agent systems. Our approach is called the Component Agent Framework for domain-Experts (CAFnE), which builds upon the concepts from Model Driven Development and the Prometheus agent software engineering methodology. CAFnE enables domain experts to work with a graphical representation of the system , which is easier to understand and work with than textual code. The model of the system, updated by domain experts, is then transformed to executable code using a transformation function. CAFnE is supported by a proof-of-concept toolkit that implements the visual modeling, model driven development and code generation. We used the CAFnE toolkit in a user study where five domain experts (weather forecasters) with no prior experience in agent programming were asked to make changes to an existing weather alerting system. Participants were able to rapidly become familiar with CAFnE concepts, comprehend the system's design, make design changes and implement them using the CAFnE toolkit.

Per keletą paskutinių metų, informacijos kiekis, apdorojamas informacinėmis technologijomis internete kiekvieną dieną, išaugo eksponentiškai. Pagrindinė problema yra ta, kad didelė dalis informacijos yra išmėtyta skirtingose, dažnai tarpusavyje nesusijusiose saugyklose, todėl tampa gana sudėtinga rasti reikiamą informaciją. Taigi, dėl padidėjusio informacijos šaltinių kiekio yra svarbu įdiegti galingas ir lengvai naudojamas informacines sistemas, kuriose būtų lengva rasti reikalingą informaciją. Tačiau paprastai tokios sistemos reikalauja pastovios portalo administratoriaus priežiūros bei informacijos atnaujinimo, kad vartotojas visada lengvai rastų pačią naujausią ir aktualiausią informaciją. Šio darbo tikslas yra padidinti informacini�� sistemų dinamiškumą, lankstumą ir automatizavimo laipsnį bei palengvinti jų priežiūrą, naudojant konfigūruojamus įvykių apdorojimo mechanizmus, kurie leistų sistemos administratoriui nustatyti ir keisti automatiškai atliekamus veiksmus. Siekiant padaryti informacines sistemas kiek įmanoma lankstesnes ir labiau automatizuotas, geriausia yra naudoti agentus. Ne paslaptis, kad agentus realizuoti duomenų bazėje verta dėl trijų priežaščių: greičio, saugumo ir patikimumo. Procedūros, realizuotos duomenų bazėje yra įvykdomos labai greitai ir neapkrauna vartotojo sąsajos. O tai labai svarbu kuriant greitas ir šiuolaikiškas interneto informacines sistemas, atitinkančias Web2 standartą. / During the last few years, amount of information, published in the internet, grew up exponentially. All that information is distributed during many different and not connected information systems, and it became difficult to find needed information easily. That’s why we need powerful but easy controlled Web information systems that would allow us to find information in more easy way. However, such systems often require maintenance and information updates from system administrators. The purpose of this work is to increase dynamism, flexibility and automation degree of information systems and to ease maintenance of such systems by implementing configurable events control mechanisms, which would allow system administrator to set up and update automatically executed actions. On purpose to make information systems configurable and automatic as much as possible, it is best to use agents. It is not a secret, that to use DBMS based agents is worth because of three reasons: rapidity, security and reliability. Procedures implemented in DBMS are executed very quickly because they do not need to be parsed, compiled or optimized every time – only during first time execution. They also do not increase loading time for web pages. Those features are very important for implementing smart internet information systems that pretend to satisfy Web2 standard requirements.

A gestão de cursos de graduação, no âmbito da coordenação de curso, está relacionada à execução de práticas que visam à melhoria da qualidade de ensino, pesquisa e extensão. No entanto, o que se observa, na maioria dos casos, é que os gestores não apresentam conhecimento aprofundado sobre os processos que estão sob sua responsabilidade, no que se refere ao fluxo de atividades e informações, devido, usualmente, a pouca qualificação ao assumirem cargos administrativos, ocorrendo uma necessidade de profissionalização da gestão. Esta tese propõe a capacitação de coordenadores de cursos de graduação, no que concerne aos seus processos de negócio, através da utilização de Jogos de Empresa. A mesma apresenta o jogo SPOIE – Simulador de Processos Organizacionais baseado em Instituições Eletrônicas, que pretende auxiliar o coordenador de curso a conhecer melhor o fluxo dos processos, os participantes envolvidos em cada processo, bem como as interações que devem ocorrer durante sua realização. A abordagem de Instituições Eletrônicas e Agentes de Software é utilizada de forma a prover mecanismos de representação das diversas interações existentes nos processos institucionais. Por fim, é apresentada uma análise da aplicação do SPOIE à coordenadores de cursos de graduação de diferentes Instituições de Educação Superior. Com a implementação da ferramenta e a aplicação realizada, percebe-se que é possível desenvolver um treinamento autônomo dos coordenadores de curso de graduação, no que concerne aos seus processos administrativos, com a abordagem supracitada. / The undergraduate programs management (course coordination) concerns in the practices implementation to qualify the teaching, research and extension. However, in most cases, the managers do not have the essential knowledge about the processes that are under their responsibility. Usually, the information flow and their activities are not so precise to the managers. A possible answer is the professor poor skills when he needs to assume an administrative position. This thesis proposes an undergraduate coordinators programs trainee. This program was focused in the business process through an Enterprise Games approach. The article presents the SPOIE - Organizational Process Simulator-based on Electronic Institutions - game, which was developed to assist the coordinator to understand the workflow, the participants involved in each case, as well as the interactions that must occur during its implementation. The software agents and the Electronic Institutions approaches are used to provide a formal representation among the interactions in the existing institutional processes. Finally, we present the SPOIE analysis held in different universities. Considering the above assertions, it is possible to conclude that the game can be used in the coordinators autonomous training of their administrative processes.

A tecnologia de agentes surge como uma solução que fornece flexibilidade e robustez para lidar com domínios dinâmicos e complexos. Tal flexibilidade pode ser alcançada através da adoção de abordagens já existentes baseadas em agentes, como a arquitetura BDI, que provê agentes com características mentais de crenças, desejos e intenções. Essa arquitetura é altamente personalizável, deixando lacunas a serem preenchidas de acordo com aplicações específicas. Uma dessas lacunas é o algoritmo de seleção de planos, responsável por selecionar um plano para ser executado pelo agente buscando atingir um objetivo, e tendo grande influência no desempenho geral do agente. Grande parte das abordagens existentes requerem considerável esforço para personalização e ajuste a fim de serem utilizadas em aplicações específicas. Nessa dissertação, propomos uma abordagem para seleção de planos apta a aprender quais planos possivelmente terão os melhores resultados, baseando-se no contexto atual e nas preferências do agente. Nossa abordagem é composta por um meta-modelo, que deve ser instanciado a fim de especificar metadados de planos, e uma técnica que usa tais metadados para aprender e predizer resultados da execução destes planos. Avaliamos nossa abordagem experimentalmente e os resultados indicam que ela é efetiva. Adicionalmente, fornecemos uma ferramenta para apoiar o processo de desenvolvimento de agentes de software baseados em nosso trabalho. Essa ferramenta permite que desenvolvedores modelem e gerem código-fonte para agentes BDI com capacidades de aprendizado. Um estudo com usuários foi realizado para avaliar os benefícios de um método de desenvolvimento baseado em agentes BDI auxiliado por ferramenta. Evidências sugerem que nossa ferramenta pode auxiliar desenvolvedores que não sejam especialistas ou que não estejam familiarizados com a tecnologia de agentes. / Agent technology arises as a solution that provides flexibility and robustness to deal with dynamic and complex domains. Such flexibility can be achieved by the adoption of existing agent-based approaches, such as the BDI architecture, which provides agents with the mental attitudes of beliefs, desires and intentions. This architecture is highly customisable, leaving gaps to be fulfilled in particular applications. One of these gaps is the plan selection algorithm that is responsible for selecting a plan to be executed by an agent to achieve a goal, having an important influence on the overall agent performance. Most existing approaches require considerable effort for customisation and adjustment to be used in particular applications. In this dissertation, we propose a plan selection approach that is able to learn plans that provide possibly best outcomes, based on current context and agent’s preferences. Our approach is composed of a meta-model, which must be instantiated to specify plan metadata, and a technique that uses such metadata to learn and predict plan outcomes. We evaluated our approach experimentally, and results indicate it is effective. Additionally, we provide a tool to support the development process of software agents based on our work. This tool allows developers to model and generate source code for BDI agents with learning capabilities. A user study was performed to assess the improvements of a tool-supported BDI-agent-based development method, and evidences suggest that our tool can help developers that are not experts or are unfamiliar with the agent technology.

A gestão de cursos de graduação, no âmbito da coordenação de curso, está relacionada à execução de práticas que visam à melhoria da qualidade de ensino, pesquisa e extensão. No entanto, o que se observa, na maioria dos casos, é que os gestores não apresentam conhecimento aprofundado sobre os processos que estão sob sua responsabilidade, no que se refere ao fluxo de atividades e informações, devido, usualmente, a pouca qualificação ao assumirem cargos administrativos, ocorrendo uma necessidade de profissionalização da gestão. Esta tese propõe a capacitação de coordenadores de cursos de graduação, no que concerne aos seus processos de negócio, através da utilização de Jogos de Empresa. A mesma apresenta o jogo SPOIE – Simulador de Processos Organizacionais baseado em Instituições Eletrônicas, que pretende auxiliar o coordenador de curso a conhecer melhor o fluxo dos processos, os participantes envolvidos em cada processo, bem como as interações que devem ocorrer durante sua realização. A abordagem de Instituições Eletrônicas e Agentes de Software é utilizada de forma a prover mecanismos de representação das diversas interações existentes nos processos institucionais. Por fim, é apresentada uma análise da aplicação do SPOIE à coordenadores de cursos de graduação de diferentes Instituições de Educação Superior. Com a implementação da ferramenta e a aplicação realizada, percebe-se que é possível desenvolver um treinamento autônomo dos coordenadores de curso de graduação, no que concerne aos seus processos administrativos, com a abordagem supracitada. / The undergraduate programs management (course coordination) concerns in the practices implementation to qualify the teaching, research and extension. However, in most cases, the managers do not have the essential knowledge about the processes that are under their responsibility. Usually, the information flow and their activities are not so precise to the managers. A possible answer is the professor poor skills when he needs to assume an administrative position. This thesis proposes an undergraduate coordinators programs trainee. This program was focused in the business process through an Enterprise Games approach. The article presents the SPOIE - Organizational Process Simulator-based on Electronic Institutions - game, which was developed to assist the coordinator to understand the workflow, the participants involved in each case, as well as the interactions that must occur during its implementation. The software agents and the Electronic Institutions approaches are used to provide a formal representation among the interactions in the existing institutional processes. Finally, we present the SPOIE analysis held in different universities. Considering the above assertions, it is possible to conclude that the game can be used in the coordinators autonomous training of their administrative processes.

A tecnologia de agentes surge como uma solução que fornece flexibilidade e robustez para lidar com domínios dinâmicos e complexos. Tal flexibilidade pode ser alcançada através da adoção de abordagens já existentes baseadas em agentes, como a arquitetura BDI, que provê agentes com características mentais de crenças, desejos e intenções. Essa arquitetura é altamente personalizável, deixando lacunas a serem preenchidas de acordo com aplicações específicas. Uma dessas lacunas é o algoritmo de seleção de planos, responsável por selecionar um plano para ser executado pelo agente buscando atingir um objetivo, e tendo grande influência no desempenho geral do agente. Grande parte das abordagens existentes requerem considerável esforço para personalização e ajuste a fim de serem utilizadas em aplicações específicas. Nessa dissertação, propomos uma abordagem para seleção de planos apta a aprender quais planos possivelmente terão os melhores resultados, baseando-se no contexto atual e nas preferências do agente. Nossa abordagem é composta por um meta-modelo, que deve ser instanciado a fim de especificar metadados de planos, e uma técnica que usa tais metadados para aprender e predizer resultados da execução destes planos. Avaliamos nossa abordagem experimentalmente e os resultados indicam que ela é efetiva. Adicionalmente, fornecemos uma ferramenta para apoiar o processo de desenvolvimento de agentes de software baseados em nosso trabalho. Essa ferramenta permite que desenvolvedores modelem e gerem código-fonte para agentes BDI com capacidades de aprendizado. Um estudo com usuários foi realizado para avaliar os benefícios de um método de desenvolvimento baseado em agentes BDI auxiliado por ferramenta. Evidências sugerem que nossa ferramenta pode auxiliar desenvolvedores que não sejam especialistas ou que não estejam familiarizados com a tecnologia de agentes. / Agent technology arises as a solution that provides flexibility and robustness to deal with dynamic and complex domains. Such flexibility can be achieved by the adoption of existing agent-based approaches, such as the BDI architecture, which provides agents with the mental attitudes of beliefs, desires and intentions. This architecture is highly customisable, leaving gaps to be fulfilled in particular applications. One of these gaps is the plan selection algorithm that is responsible for selecting a plan to be executed by an agent to achieve a goal, having an important influence on the overall agent performance. Most existing approaches require considerable effort for customisation and adjustment to be used in particular applications. In this dissertation, we propose a plan selection approach that is able to learn plans that provide possibly best outcomes, based on current context and agent’s preferences. Our approach is composed of a meta-model, which must be instantiated to specify plan metadata, and a technique that uses such metadata to learn and predict plan outcomes. We evaluated our approach experimentally, and results indicate it is effective. Additionally, we provide a tool to support the development process of software agents based on our work. This tool allows developers to model and generate source code for BDI agents with learning capabilities. A user study was performed to assess the improvements of a tool-supported BDI-agent-based development method, and evidences suggest that our tool can help developers that are not experts or are unfamiliar with the agent technology.

[pt] A escolha e materialização de índices são atividades comumente realizadas por administradores de bancos de dados (DBAs) para acelerar o processamento de aplicações de bancos de dados. Devido à complexidade da tarefa de seleção de índices e à pressão por maior produtividade sobre os profissionais que realizam sintonia, diversos trabalhos na literatura e em sistemas comerciais procuram obter ferramentas que possam apoiar o DBA na escolha dos melhores índices para uma dada carga de trabalho. Classificamos estes trabalhos como sendo de auto-sintonia local, uma vez que se focam em um problema de sintonia específico, em oposição a trabalhos de auto-sintonia global, que almejam obter um desempenho aceitável para o sistema como um todo. Esta dissertação propõe duas arquiteturas que permitem automatizar completamente a sintonia de índices. A indepedência de intervenção humana é obtida através do uso de agentes de software. A combinação de agentes com SGBDs torna os sistemas mais autônomos e capazes de auto-sintonia. Implementamos uma das arquiteturas propostas no SGBD de código fonte aberto PostgreSQL e obtivemos resultados experimentais com uma carga transacional que mostram a viabilidade de nossa abordagem. / [en] The choice and materialization of indexes are activities commonly done by database administrators to speed up database application processing. Due to the complexity of the index selection task and to the pressure for productivity increase put on tuning professionals, many works on the literature and on commercial systems seek for tools that can help the DBA choose the best indexes for a given workload. We classify these works as local self- tuning, once they are interested in a specific tuning problem, in opposition to global self-tuning work, which is targeted at obtaining acceptable performance for the system as a whole. This dissertation proposes two architectures that allow the complete automation of the index tuning task. Human intervention independence is achieved through the use of software agents. The combination of agents and DBMS makes systems more autonomous and self-tuning. We have implemented one of the proposed architectures in the open source DBMS PostgreSQL and obtained experimental results with a transactional workload that show the feasibility of our approach.

Active Documents is a technique for automating the handling and control of documents by making them a combination of service providers (mobile agents) and resources (compound documents) in the form of autonomous agents. The main focus of this solution is to provide an encapsulation of documents, including their data structures and related functionality, but also to enable documents to reflect upon themselves in respect of their computational environment, and take actions accordingly.