Paolo Bresciani – författare

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations - day. In almost every sector – manufacturing, education, health care, government and businesses large and small – information systems are relied upon for - eryday work, communication, information gathering and decision-making. Yet, the in?exibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are ?exible, robust and responsive to rapid and unexpected change. Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of - formation systems. They o?er higher-level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, p- ception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc., all of which need conc- tual modelling. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive work ?ows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow for more faithful and ?- ible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more e?ective requirements analysis and architectural/detailed design.

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations - day. In almost every sector – manufacturing, education, health care, government and businesses large and small – information systems are relied upon for - eryday work, communication, information gathering and decision-making. Yet, the in?exibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are ?exible, robust and responsive to rapid and unexpected change. Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of - formation systems. They o?er higher-level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, p- ception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc., all of which need conc- tual modelling. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive work ?ows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow for more faithful and ?- ible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more e?ective requirements analysis and architectural/detailed design.

Information systems underpin today’s business and entertainment. The means by which these information systems have been developed has changed over the years. Although the current paradigm is to use object-oriented concepts, a new set of concepts, focussed on agent technology, is starting to be evaluated. Agents offer higher level abstractions (than objects) for the conceptualization, design and implementation of information systems. Agents have autonomy, can reason and can coordinate within societies of agents. The AOIS series of workshops explores the potential for facilitating the increased usage of agent technology in the creation of information systems in the widest sense. In 2005, two AOIS workshops were held internationally. The first was affiliated with the AAMAS 2005 meeting in July in Utrecht in The Netherlands and chaired by Henderson-Sellers and Winikoff and the second with ER 2005 in November in Klagenfurt in Austria and chaired by Kolp and Bresciani. The best papers from these meetings were identified and authors invited to revise and possibly extend their papers in the light of reviewers’ comments and feedback at the workshop. We have grouped these papers loosely under four headings: Agent behavior, communications and reasoning; Methodologies and ontologies; Agent-oriented software engineering; and Applications. These categories fairly represent the breadth of current AOIS research as well as encompassing the papers presented at the two AOIS workshops. We trust you will find the content of these selected and revised papers to be of interest and utility.

Information systems underpin today’s business and entertainment. The means by which these information systems have been developed has changed over the years. Although the current paradigm is to use object-oriented concepts, a new set of concepts, focussed on agent technology, is starting to be evaluated. Agents offer higher level abstractions (than objects) for the conceptualization, design and implementation of information systems. Agents have autonomy, can reason and can coordinate within societies of agents. The AOIS series of workshops explores the potential for facilitating the increased usage of agent technology in the creation of information systems in the widest sense. In 2005, two AOIS workshops were held internationally. The first was affiliated with the AAMAS 2005 meeting in July in Utrecht in The Netherlands and chaired by Henderson-Sellers and Winikoff and the second with ER 2005 in November in Klagenfurt in Austria and chaired by Kolp and Bresciani. The best papers from these meetings were identified and authors invited to revise and possibly extend their papers in the light of reviewers’ comments and feedback at the workshop. We have grouped these papers loosely under four headings: Agent behavior, communications and reasoning; Methodologies and ontologies; Agent-oriented software engineering; and Applications. These categories fairly represent the breadth of current AOIS research as well as encompassing the papers presented at the two AOIS workshops. We trust you will find the content of these selected and revised papers to be of interest and utility.

This is the eighth year that the Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS) workshops have been held. Papers submitted to AOIS show an increase in quality and maturity as agent technology is being increasingly seen as a viable alternative for software and systems development. In AOIS, we focus on the application of agent technology in information systems development and explore the potential for facilitating the increased usage of agent technology in the creation of information systems in the widest sense. This year’s workshops were held in conjunction with two major, international computing research conferences: the first, in May 2006, was affiliated with the AAMAS conference in Hakadote, Japan and chaired by Garcia, Ghose and Kolp. The second was held in conjunction with the international CAiSE conference held in Luxembourg (June 2006) and chaired by Bresciani, Henderson-Sellers and Mouratidis. (Details of all preceding workshops are to be found at http:// www. aois. org. ) The best papers from both these meetings were identified and authors invited to revise and extend their papers in light of the reviewers’ comments and feedback at the workshop. Following submission to this compendium volume, another round of reviews was undertaken resulting in what you can read here. These re-reviews were undertaken by three members of the Programme Committee – we wish to thank both the authors for undertaking the necessary revisions and the reviewers for this extra call on their precious time.