This document discusses using multi-agent systems in a context-aware environment for global software development. It proposes an architecture called ContextP-GSD that uses an ontology called OntoDiSEN to capture context information. A case study demonstrates how ContextP-GSD can use time zone information to determine the appropriate communication method. The document also presents the DiSEN Agency framework for distributed knowledge management using agents and describes future work to improve integration with the DiSEN environment and evaluate semantic repositories.

1. Multi-agent applications in a context-aware
global software development environment
Alberto Barbosa Biasão, Helio Henrique L. C. Monte-Alto
Elisa Hatsue Moriya Huzita, Lucas de Oliveira Teixeira
State University of Maringá, Informatics Department
1 Distributed Software Development Laboratory

2. Summary
 Global Software Development – GSD
 Context-awareness
 Context-awareness and MAS
 ContextP-GSD
 OntoDiSEN
 Case study: Time Zone
 DiSEN User Rating
 DiSEN Agency
 Conclusions and future works
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3. Global Software Development – GSD
 World has been watching the distribuction of
software development among countries. Industries
are reallocating production unities upon
decentralized location, where specialized workforce
can be promptly found, and there are possibilities of
taking advantage from local politics and economics
[Vardi et al, 2006].
 DiSEN (Distributed Software Engineering
Environment) [Pascutti, 2002]
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4. Context-awareness
 The term refers to the ability of an entity to be aware
of context information and use this information to
adapt its behavior accordingly. [Laitakari e Pakkala,
2008].
 Context: any information that can be used to
characterize the situation of entities that are
considered relevant to the interaction between a
user and an application, including the user and the
application themselves [Dey et al, 2001]
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5. Context-awareness and MAS
 Decentralized decisions about the context of the
environment
 Agents reduce complexity on distributed systems:
autonomy, situatedness and high-level interactions
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6. ContextP-GSD
ContextP-GSD’s architecture
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7. OntoDiSEN
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8. ContextP-GSD’s Case Study: Time Zone
 Fragment of time zone inference rule set (generic form):
𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑟 ∧ 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑟, ? 𝑡 ∧
𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟𝐼𝑠𝐼𝑛𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑙 ∧ ℎ𝑎𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑙, ? 𝑡2 ∧ ? 𝑡 ≠ ? 𝑡2 ⇒
𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝐴𝑠𝑦𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙, ? 𝑝 ;
𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑟 ∧ 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑟, ? 𝑡 ∧
𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟𝐼𝑠𝐼𝑛𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 ? 𝑝, ? 𝑙 ∧ ℎ𝑎𝑠𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒 ? 𝑙, ? 𝑡 ⇒
𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛(𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝐴𝑠𝑦𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙, ? 𝑝 ) ∧
𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛(𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑆𝑦𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑝, ? 𝑝 );
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9. DiSEN User Rating
 Support allocation of human resources to software
projects
DiSEN User Rating overview
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10. DiSEN Agency
 Framework / architecture for knowledge-based MAS
 Encapsulates solutions for performance and scalability issues
 Focus on context-aware distributed systems
 Scalability, performance and reuse
 Motivation:
 Concurrent access to the knowledge base
 Knowledge distribution
 Low coupling with the storage technology
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11. DiSEN Agency
DiSEN Agency’s architecture
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12. Conclusions
 ContextP-GSD advantages:
 Improves efficiency on users’ communication
 Flexibility and rationality: ontology and inference rules
 MAS approach: context-awareness in a distributed system
 DiSEN Agency:
 Encapsulates solutions for scalability and performance issues
 Can be used in various application domains:
 GSD
 Semantic web
 Collaborative systems
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13. Future works
 Improvements:
 Better integration with DiSEN environment
 Knowledge distribution / partitioning
 Performance and scalability issues on persistence operations
and consistency check
 Semantic repositories evaluation
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14. References
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Force, ACM
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 Pascutti MCD (2002) Uma proposta de arquitetura de um ambiente de
desenvolvimento de software distribuído baseado em agentes. Dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
 Jennings N (2001) An agent-based approach for building complex software systems. Commun. ACM, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 35–41
 Dickinson I (2009) Jena Ontology API. http://jena.sourceforge.net/ontology. Accessed 15 May 2011
 Prud'hommeaux E, Seaborne A (2008) SPARQL Query Language for RDF. http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query. Accessed
05 Jan 2012.
 Russel S, Norvig P (2003) Artificial Intelligence: a modern approach. 2nd edition, Pearson Education Inc
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15. Questions? Suggestions?
Multi-agent applications in a context-aware
global software development environment
Alberto Barbosa Biasão
Helio Henrique L. C. Monte-Alto
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