Robust Software Agents with the Jadescript Programming Language

This paper discusses several recent additions to the Jadescript agent-oriented programming language that regard the effective detection and handling of exceptional and erroneous situations at runtime. These new features were introduced to better support the mission-critical level of robustness that software agents are normally demanded to exhibit. The description of these new features is supported by an analysis of the state of the art of exception handling in programming languages, and it is complemented by a discussion on planned future developments. First, the novel exception handling mechanism introduced in Jadescript is presented, and the conceptual similarities and differences with the exception handling mechanisms normally provided by mainstream programming languages are emphasized. Second, the recent additions to Jadescript designed to support failures in behaviours are described, and these additions are related to the novel exception handling mechanism. Finally, the recent language support to manage stale messages using dedicated message handlers is presented and discussed.