The KODAMA methodology: An agent-based distributed approach

The KODAMA methodology is our endeavour to explore new analysis and design methodologies, as well as new tools, for developing ubiquitous applications around autonomous, interacting software agents. To concrete and detail the well-known multiagent system paradigm, KODAMA introduces a plug-and-play agent model, an agent community model and an on-demand interaction model. At the top level, a whole system is decomposed into various agent communities. Working one level down, communities are broken down into independent agents. At the lowest level, agent roles axe the basic entities for specifying agent activities in online interactions. In this article, we first present how these new models are exploited in the analysis and design phases; then discuss some details of how they are implemented in a practical shopping-support system.