A Systemic Approach to Define Agents

Abstract

Software agent is a very popular topic in computer science in the past few years. One of the promising applications of agent technology is shown in web applications. A tool for understanding, structuring, and defining agents becomes very important in order to release the power of this revolutionizing concept. This article surveys the definitions of agents and proposes an agent definition framework in the light of the Soft Systems Methodology to understand, define and model agents systematically.