Agent-based unit testing environment for extreme programming

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach of using multi-agent system (MAS) to build a software engineering environment to support unit testing process for extreme programming (XP). The MAS reference model by Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is extended in this paper. The extended components are: 1) agent roles, 2) storage components, and 3) ontology. The FIPA-complied Java Agent Development framework (JADE) agent platform is used in implementation. The Darpa agent mark-up language (DAML) is used as process data format, including ontology. And, JENA API by Hewlett-Packard (HP) is used to store DAML ontology. Further, examples are given to show feasibility of this approach. The expected benefits of this agent-based approach are to: 1) Improve environment flexibility and reliability, 2) Facilitate XP practices, and 3) Use DAML format that is suitable for agents.