The Semantic Web provides access to heterogeneous, distributed information, enabling software products to mediate between user needs and the information sources available. Agents are one of the most promising technologies for the development of Semantic Web software products. However, agent-based technologies will not become widespread until there are adequate infrastructures for the development of semantic multi-agent systems (MAS). Some challenges, such as turning software agents into practical abstractions for dealing with ontologies, taking advantage of the distributed nature of the Web to create distributed agents and making a seamless integration with existing Web tools, e.g. the browser, still need to be addressed. This paper describes the main features of the SemantiCore framework, an agent infrastructure to develop semantic MAS. A look at a benchmark Semantic Web application illustrates the SemantiCore potential as an infrastructure for the deployment of semantic agent applications.

Law enforcement approaches have been proposed to promote dependability in open multi-agent systems. Interaction laws are defined and then enforced to promote predictability. As new software demands and requirements appear, the system and its interaction laws must evolve to support those changes. The purpose of domain engineering is to produce a set of reusable assets for a family of systems, which are then used to build concrete members of the family. Flexibility is the ease with which a system or component can be modified for use in applications other than those for which it was originally designed. In this paper, we discuss how the MLaw infrastructure was designed to support interaction law evolution providing support to produce a set of reusable laws for a family of systems. As an example, we have implemented two customizable applications in the area of electronic negotiation expressed as an open system environment.