title: Fault Tolerant Middleware for Agent Systems: A Refinement Approach creator: Laibinis, Linas creator: Troubitsyna, Elena creator: Iliasov, Alexei creator: Romanovsky, Alexander subject: Refinement subject: Resilience description: Agent technology offers a number of advantages over traditional distributed systems, such as asynchronous communication, anonymity of individual agents and ability to change operational context. However, it is notoriously difficult to ensure dependability of agent systems. In this paper we present a formal approach for the top-down development of fault tolerant middleware for agent systems. We demonstrate how to develop the middleware that besides providing agent coordination is also able to cope with their failures. We focus on handling agent crushes and transient faults caused by volatile communication environment. We argue that formal development of middleware with integrated fault tolerance mechanisms has potential to enhance dependability of an agent system. publisher: LAAS, France date: 2009-05 type: Conference or Workshop Item type: PeerReviewed identifier: Laibinis, Linas and Troubitsyna, Elena and Iliasov, Alexei and Romanovsky, Alexander (2009) Fault Tolerant Middleware for Agent Systems: A Refinement Approach. In: 12th European Workshop on Dependable Computing (EWDC 2009), 14-15 May 2009, Toulouse, France. relation: http://deploy-eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/94/