Multi-agent systems (MASs) are being increasingly used in complex and distributed applications development. Such applications should satisfy the requirements of users in terms of quality. Accordingly, it is important to assess the quality of such systems. In fact, several metrics have been proposed to assess different aspects of multi-agent systems. However, the lack of comprehensive quality model for multi-agent applications that combines the software's characteristics with the proposed metrics limits the usefulness of such metrics. In this paper, we propose an overall quality model for multi-agent-based software, called QM4MAS. An overall quality model gives a global view of the quality showing the relationships between its characteristics. The use of QM4MAS has two main objectives: 1) It allows defining and assessing the MAS quality; 2) it facilitates the maintenance of software product (high quality software is easier to maintain). The proposed model has been applied to JADE applications through a set of metrics. The assessment of JADE's proposed metrics can be done automatically using a tool we developed for this purpose. 298 T. Marir et al.
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