An agent-based software development method for developing an agent-based multimedia system

Abstract

We proposed a rapid prototyping approach that combines the component based software engineering (CBSE) and the case-based reasoning (CBR) techniques to facilitate the development of agent-based multimedia software. This approach applies CBR to retrieve existing agent software components from an old agent design case and adapt retrieved components to construct an agent system that fulfills the user's requirements. The design of an agent-based multimedia system is divided into the group level, agent level, skill level, module level, and code level. Those levels are organized from abstract (group) level to concrete (code) level, and multiple cases in a hierarchical representation are used to represent the design of an agent system. Reusing software components as bases to construct an agent-based multimedia system is useful because designing and building an agent-based multimedia system is a complex task and to rebuild each component of such a system is time consuming and redundant. We propose an approach to help the system developer reuse the experience of designing an agent-based multimedia system. The system developer can focus their point in problem solving instead of constructing the agent software architecture.