STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED AGENT BASED METHODOLOGIES. (ROADMAP, HLIM, STYX AND SONIA). Nwagu, Chikezie Kenneth, Omankwu, Obinnaya Chinecherem, and Inyiama, Hycient 1 Computer Science Department, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka Anambra State, Nigeria, Nwaguchikeziekenneth@hotmail.com 2 Computer Science Department, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria saintbeloved@yahoo.com 3 Electronics & Computer Engineering Department, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka Anambra State, Nigeria. Abstract Agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) systems are often distinguished with intelligence, autonomy, and reasoning. The main purposes of development AOSE methodologies are to facilitate the process of developing software lifecycle, and increase the quality of software products. Now, there are no agreements on constructing agents or modeling them in the lifecycle development process. Large number of AOSE methodologies with various backgrounds, was available in the last years. However, assessment of these methodologies faced several difficulties; the completeness of various methodologies varies explicitly, for this, comparing agent methodologies is more difficult; as they cover different aspects or differ in their terminology. The main objective of this study is to analyze several agent-based methodologies in an attempt to assess and understand the relationship among these agent-oriented methodologies by performing structural analysis. Keywords: Agents, Software Engineering, Methodologies. Introduction In the last few years, agent researchers have made clear progress in proving a theoretical and practical understanding of many aspects of software agents and multi-agent systems (MASs). Also they attempted introduce many diverse methodologies to change software development from an ad-hoc practice to high- quality software. Software developers faced numerous problems regarding AOSE such as specifying which methodology is the best approach to take to develop a solution. As well as, there is a lack of consistency between the different analysis and design methods that are currently available. In this paper we select four agent-based methodologies ROADMAP methodologies [1] ROADMAP (Role-Oriented Analysis and Design for Multi-Agent Programming) is emerged in 2002 as a methodology for agent oriented analysis and design, HILM methodologies [2] An agent-oriented methodology: High- Level and Intermediate Models (HLIM) is an AOSE methodology, which is design specifically for agent- based system development, Styx methodologies [3], is a detailed AOSE methodology, and SONIA [4] (Set of models for a Natural Identification of Agents) methodologies. Each of the selected methodologies has different strengths and weaknesses, and different specialized features to support different aspects of their intended application domains. We performed structural analysis for selected methodologies based on [5] and investigated their relevancy to agent-based systems to identify the similarities and differences among selected agent-oriented methodologies. 2. Structural Analysis As a result of this study, clearly no single methodology is suitable to all applications. However, with application complexity increasing, we expect future applications to have an increasingly large number of aspects which cannot be addressed by a single methodology alone. To introduce engineering support for International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS), Vol. 15, No. 6, June 2017 45 https://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ ISSN 1947-5500