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APPOINTMENT SCHEDULING AMONG AGENTS:A CASE STUDY IN DESIGNING SUITABLEINTERACTION PROTOCOLS

This article presents a case study in the design of suitable communication protocols for software agents. A process to derive a formal language from example stories is proposed and presented for the case of appointment scheduling among agents. Such a formal language that consists of language primitives and protocols is prerequisite for coordination and mutual understanding in agent systems. It can either be used among software agents or for the communication between software agents and real agents (human principals, software users). Important requirements are intuitivity, consistency, extensibility and a clear separation between invariant protocol structures and variant reasoning elements. The proposed story-driven designprocess is analyzed and evaluated according to these requirements. It is illustrated using an example story for hospital patient scheduling.