Measures for Testing the Reactivity Property of a Software Agent

Abstract

Abstract-Agent technology is meant for developing complex distributed applications. Software agents are the key building blocks of a Multi-Agent System (MAS). Software agents are unique in its nature as it possesses certain distinctive properties such as Pro-activity, Reactivity, Social-ability, Mobility etc., Agent's behavior might differ for same input at different cases and thus testing an agent and to evaluate the quality of an agent is a tedious task. Thus the measures to evaluate the quality characteristics of an agent and to evaluate the agent behavior are lacking. The main objective of the paper is to come out with a set of measures to evaluate agent's characteristics in particular the reactive property, so that the quality of an agent can be determined.