INTERACTION-ORIENTED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

This paper describes a new approach to the production of robust software. We first motivate the approach by explaining why the two major goals of software engineering — correct software and reusable software — are not being addressed by the current state of software practice. We then describe a methodology based on active, cooperative, and persistent software components, i.e., agents, and show how the methodology produces robust and reusable software. We derive requirements for the structure and behavior of the agents, and report on preliminary experiments on applications based on the methodology. We conclude with a roadmap for development of the methodology and ruminations about uses for the new computational paradigm.