Computational Science and Techniques

Occurrence of the agent paradigm and its further applications have stimulated the emergence of new concepts and methodologies in computer science. Today terms like multi-agent system, agent-oriented methodology, and agent-oriented programming (AOP) are widely used. The aim of this paper is to clarify the validity of usage of the terms AOP and AOP language. This is disclosed in two phases of an analysis process. Determining to which concepts, terms like agent, programming, object-oriented analysis and design, object-oriented programming, and agent-oriented analysis and design correspond is accomplished in the first phase. Analysis of several known agent system engineering methodologies in terms of key concepts used, final resulting artifacts, and their relationship with known programming paradigms and modern tools for agent system development is performed in the second phase. The research shows that in the final phase of agent system design and in the coding stage, the main artifact is an object, defined according to the rules of the object-oriented paradigm. Hence, we conclude that the computing society still does not have AOP owing to the lack of an AOP language. Thus, the term AOP is very often incorrectly assigned to agent system development frameworks that in all cases, transform agents into objects.