Assessment of the Design Modularity and Stability of Multi-Agent System Product Lines

A multi-agent system product line (mas-pl) defines an architecture whose design and implementation is accomplished using software agents to address its common and variable features. mas-pl promotes the large-scale reuse of common and variable agency features across multiple mas applications. the development of mas-pls can be achieved through mas-specific platforms and implementation techniques, such as conditional compilation and aspect-oriented programming (aop). however, there is not much evidence on how these techniques provide better modularity, allowing the conception of stable mas-pl designs. this paper presents a quantitative study on the design modularity and stability of an evolving mas- pl. the mas-pl was built following the reactive product line adoption approach. the product line was developed and evolved based on several versions of a conference management web- based system, named expert committee (ec). our evaluation is made through a series of change scenarios related to new agency features, which are agent characteristics that enhance the system with autonomous behavior. the quantitative study consists of a systematic comparison between two different versions of the ec mas-pl based on a mas-specific platform, called jade. one version was implemented with object-oriented and conditional compilation techniques. the other one relied on aop. our analysis was driven by well-known modularity and change impact metrics.