DAAF 2015 - 2nd International Workshop on Developing and Applying Agent Frameworks

International Workshop on Developing and Applying Agent Frameworks (DAAF) provides an international forum for experts that are involved in the development of multi-agent frameworks and that work together in order to make multi-agent technology more attractive for industrial stakeholders.
Jack, JADE, JADEX, JIAC, JaCaMo, Janus, are only the most popular examples for frameworks that support the development of multi-agent based applications. The real number of multi-agent frameworks is hard to guess, not least because many research groups use their very own implementations in order to do experimental research. Usually the results from this experimental research are published, while the underlying implementation is rarely described.
This information, however, is extremely valuable for practitioners as it helps them to understand what kind of framework features are required by researchers. The large number of available implementation platforms shows that there is great effort to implement multi-agent frameworks and agent oriented software respectively, though, it also shows that there are mostly specialised solutions available.
In academic terms, this trend is well appreciated as it emphasises the activity of the community, though, after roughly 20 years of research in agent oriented software engineering, the community was ? as yet ? not able to convince industrial stakeholders to use agent technology for larger industrial endeavours.
One possible reason for this lack of acceptance is the difficulty to assess the practical applicability of theorems that are presented under the umbrella of agent research. Many works are evaluated by means of custom implementations that are streamlined towards the problem but neglect other features of software agents. The bottom-line is that the presented concept may work for a laboratory setup but may require adaptions in the
field, where one is dealing with a real distributed system (including comprehensive communication, incomplete knowledge, unavailability of services, etc.).
Evaluations that are done by means of a framework which is commonly accepted by the community and which is known to be applicable for real world problems may help industrial stakeholders to better understand the practical implications of research results and may help to make the agent paradigm more attractive. Admittedly, such framework will not be able to change the industries’ point of view, though, it may help the agent community to assess their works in terms of practical applicability and thus help to direct agent research towards industrial requirements.
The aim of this workshop is to discuss the features, usability and performance of all implementation platforms that can be used to implement agent oriented software. It is our aim to establish an international forum of experts that are involved in the development of multi-agent frameworks and that work together in order to realise our all interest, namely: to make agent technology more attractive for industrial stakeholders.
Therefore, DAAF solicits papers addressing the development of frameworks that support and facilitate the development of agent oriented software applications. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
Agent frameworks
Application of agent frameworks
Agent development techniques
Tools, tool-suites and environments for the development of agent oriented software
Integrated development environments for agent oriented software engineering
Agent programming languages
Agent oriented software engineering
Quality management for agent frameworks
Certification and standardisation of agent frameworks
Agent-based development methodologies
Agent oriented simulation frameworks
Interesting applications that were developed by means of agent frameworks