Software engineering for service-oriented MAS

Nowadays, service-oriented architectures (SOA) and multiagent systems (MAS) are two increasingly important technologies. Despite the differences in technology, SOA and MAS have some similar objectives and their integration produces systems with more flexibility. functionality and interoperability. Their integration creates new requirements and special methods and tools are, necessary to develop systems that integrate both technologies. This paper analyzes the most, important issues for developing service-oriented MAS. Furthermore, some methods and tools to develop this kind of systems are analyzed to show how current approaches solve the problem of the integration between agents and services.