article

Achieving Mobile Agent Systems interoperability through software layering

Authors:

Giancarlo Fortino,

Wilma RussoAuthors Info & Claims

Information and Software Technology, Volume 50, Issue 4

Pages 322 - 341

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.016

Published: 01 March 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Interoperability is a key issue for a wider adoption of mobile agent systems (MASs) in heterogeneous and open distributed environments where agents, in order to fulfill their tasks, must interact with non-homogeneous agents and traverse different agent platforms to access remote resources. To date, while several approaches have been proposed to deal with different aspects of MAS interoperability, they all lack the necessary flexibility to provide an adequate degree of interoperability among the currently available MASs. In this paper, we propose an application-level approach grounded in the software layering concept, which enables execution, migration and communication interoperability between Java-based mobile agent systems, thus overcoming major setbacks affecting the other approaches currently proposed for supporting MAS interoperability. In particular, we define a Java-based framework, named JIMAF, which relies on an event-driven, proxy-based mobile agent model and supports interoperable mobile agents which can be easily coded and adapted to existing MASs without any modifications of the MAS infrastructures. Results from the performance evaluation of MAS interoperability was carried by using JIMAF atop Aglets, Ajanta, Grasshopper, and Voyager, demonstrating that the high-level JIMAF approach offers high efficacy while maintaining overhead at acceptable levels for target computing environments.

References

[1]

Aglets mobile agent system, documentation and software. Available from http://aglets.sourceforge.net/, 2002.

[2]

Ajanta mobile agent system, documentation and software. Available from http://www.cs.umn.edu/Ajanta/, 2003.

[3]

P. Bellavista, A. Corradi, C. Stefanelli, Corba solutions for interoperability in mobile agent environments, in: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications (DAO 2000), 21-23 September, Antwerp, The Netherlands, 2000, pp. 283-292.

[4]

Bellifemine, F., Poggi, A. and Rimassa, G., Developing multi-agent systems with a FIPA-compliant agent framework. Software - Practice and Experience. v31 i2. 103-128.

[5]

Braun, P., Muller, I., Geisenhainer, S., Schau, V. and Rossak, W.R., Agent migration as an optional service in an extendable agent toolkit architecture. In: Karmouch, A., Korba, L., Madeira, E. (Eds.), LNCS 3284, Springer Verlag, Berlin. pp. 127-136.

[6]

Braun, P. and Rossak, W.R., Mobile Agents-Basic Concept, Mobility Models, and the Tracy Toolkit. 2005. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

[7]

Braun, P., Trinh, D. and Kowalczyk, R., Integrating a new mobility service into the Jade agent toolkit. In: Karmouch, A., Pierre, S. (Eds.), LNCS 3744, Springer Verlag, Berlin. pp. 354-363.

[8]

Dikaiakos, M., Kyriakou, M. and Samaras, G., Performance evaluation of mobile-agent middleware: A hierarchical approach. In: Picco, J.P. (Ed.), LNCS 2240, Springer Verlag, Berlin. pp. 244-259.

[9]

G. Fortino, F. Frattolillo, W. Russo, E. Zimeo, Mobile Active Objects for highly dynamic distributed computing, in: Proceedings of the IEEE IPDPS'02, Workshop on Java for Parallel and Distributed Computing, 15-19 April, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2002, pp. 1-8.

[10]

Fortino, G., Russo, W. and Zimeo, E., A Statecharts-based software development process for mobile agents. Information and Software Technology. v46 i13. 907-921.

[11]

Foundation for Intelligent and Physical Agents, documentation and specifications. Available from http://www.fipa.org, 2004.

[12]

Grasshopper mobile agent system, IKV++ GmbH, documentation and software. Available from http://www.grasshopper.de/, 2003.

[13]

Gray, R.S., Cybenko, G., Kotz, D., Peterson, R.A. and Rus, D., D'Agents: Applications and performance of a mobile-agent system. Software - Practice and Experience. v32 i6. 543-573.

[14]

R. Gray, D. Kotz, G. Cybenko, D. Rus, Mobile Agents: Motivations and State of the Art Systems, Technical Report TR2000-365, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., April 2000.

[15]

Grimstrup, A., Gray, R., Kotz, D., Breedy, M., Carvalho, M., Cowin, T., Chacon, D., Barton, J., Garret, C. and Hofmann, M., Toward interoperability of mobile-agent systems. In: LNCS 2535, Springer Verlag, Berlin. pp. 106-120.

[16]

T. Gschwind, Comparing object oriented mobile agent systems, in: Proceedings of the 6th ECOOP Workshop on Mobile Object Systems, June 13, Sophia Antipolis, France, 2000.

[17]

JIMAF (Java-based Interoperable Mobile Agent Framework), documentation and software. Available from http://lisdip.deis.unical.it/software/jimaf/, 2006.

[18]

Karnik, N.M. and Tripathi, A.R., Design issues in mobile-agent programming systems. IEEE Concurrency. v6 i3. 52-61.

[19]

Y. Labrou, T. Finin, Y. Peng, The interoperability problem: Bringing together mobile agents and agent communication languages, in: Proceedings of the IEEE Hawaii Int'l Conference on System Sciences, 5-8 January, Maui, Hawaii, 1999.

[20]

Lakos, J., Large Scale C++ Software Design. 1996. Addison-Wesley.

[21]

Lange, D. and Oshima, M., Programming and Deploying Java Mobile Agents with Aglets. 1998. Addison-Wesley.

[22]

Lentini, R.P., Rao, G.P., Thies, J.N. and Kay, J., EMAA: An extendable mobile agent architecture. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Software Tools for Developing Agents, 26-27 July 1998, Madison, Wisconsin, AAAI Press. pp. 133-134.

[23]

L. Magnin, V.T. Pham, A. Dury, N. Besson, A. Thiefaine, Our guest agents are welcome to your agent platforms, in: Proceedings of the Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'02), 10-13 March, Madrid, Spain, 2002, pp. 107-114.

[24]

MASIF (Mobile Agent System Interoperability Facility) specification, OMG TC Document orbos/98-03-09. Available from ftp://ftp.omg.org/pub/docs/orbos/98-03-09.pdf, 1998.

[25]

Milojicic, D., Breugst, M., Busse, I., Campbell, J., Covaci, S., Friedman, B., Kosaka, K., Lange, D., Ono, K., Oshima, M., Tham, C., Virdhagriswaran, S. and White, J., MASIF: The OMG mobile agent system interoperability facility. Personal Technologies. v2 i3. 117-129.

[26]

P. Misikangas, K. Raatikainen, Agent migration between incompatible agent platforms, in: Proceedings of the 20th Int'l Conference on Distributed Computer Systems, IEEE Computer Society Press, 10-13 April, Taipei, Taiwan, 2000, pp. 4-10.

[27]

Objectspace Voyager, documentation and software. Available from http://www.recursionsw.com/products/voyager, 2003.

[28]

Picco, G., Mobile agents: An introduction. Journal of Microprocessors and Microsystems. v25 i2. 65-74.

[29]

U. Pinsdorf, V. Roth, Mobile agent interoperability patterns and practice, in: Proceedings of 9th Annual IEEE Int'l Conference and Workshop on the Engineering of Computer-Based Systems (ECBS), 8-12 April, Lund, Sweden, 2002, pp. 238-244.

[30]

Silva, A.R., Romao, A., Deugo, D. and Mira da Silva, M., Towards a reference model for surveying mobile agent systems. Autonomous Agent and Multi-Agent Systems. v4 i3. 187-231.

[31]

Suri, N., Bradshaw, J.M., Breedy, M.R., Groth, P.T., Hill, G.A. and Jeffers, R., Strong mobility and fine-grained resource control in NOMADS. In: LNCS 1882, Springer Verlag, Berlin. pp. 2-15.

[32]

D. Tjung, M. Tsukamoto, S. Nishio, A converter approach for mobile agent systems integration: A case of Aglets to Voyager, in: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mobile Agents for Telecommunication Applications (MATA 1999), 6-8 October, Ottawa, Canada, 1999, pp. 179-195.

[33]

Tripathi, A.R., Karnik, N.M., Ahmed, T., Singh, R.D., Prakasah, A., Kakani, V., Vora, M.K. and Pathak, M., Design of the Ajanta System for mobile agent programming. Journal of Systems and Software. v62 i2. 123-140.

Cited By

Benedetti MMessina FPappalardo GSantoro C(2017)JarvSisCluster Computing10.5555/3110402.311047720:2(1775-1790)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3110402.3110477
De Benedetti MMessina FPappalardo GSantoro C(2017)Web-based Simulations of Multi-agent SystemsSimulation10.1177/003754971770619893:9(737-748)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1177/0037549717706198
Aloi GCaliciuri GFortino GGravina RPace PRusso WSavaglio C(2017)Enabling IoT interoperability through opportunistic smartphone-based mobile gatewaysJournal of Network and Computer Applications10.1016/j.jnca.2016.10.01381:C(74-84)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jnca.2016.10.013
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Achieving Mobile Agent Systems interoperability through software layering
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence
      1. Intelligent agents
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties
      1. Interoperability
    2. Software system structures
      1. Software architectures

Recommendations

Interoperability for mobile agents by incarnation agents
AAMAS '03: Proceedings of the second international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems

Many different kinds of mobile agent platforms have been developed. However, migration to a different type of mobile agent platform is actually impossible. As a solution to this problem, we propose an interoperability concept using incarnation agents. ...
Dealing with interoperability for agent-based services
AGENTS '01: Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents

Interoperability problems occur when developing agent systems with a strong notion of autonomy while interacting with other agents. The agent platform has become the intelligent distributed operating system for agent applications and therefore the ...
Debugging Mobile Agent Systems
IIWAS '13: Proceedings of International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services

A mobile agent is an autonomous software module that can migrate between different computers. A mobile agent is designed and implemented like a human, and mobile agents work together by interactions among them like a human community. Thus, a mobile ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Information and Software Technology

Information and Software Technology Volume 50, Issue 4

March, 2008

120 pages

ISSN:0950-5849

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © Elsevier B.V. © 2007.

Publisher

Butterworth-Heinemann

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 March 2008

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

11
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 02 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Benedetti MMessina FPappalardo GSantoro C(2017)JarvSisCluster Computing10.5555/3110402.311047720:2(1775-1790)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3110402.3110477
De Benedetti MMessina FPappalardo GSantoro C(2017)Web-based Simulations of Multi-agent SystemsSimulation10.1177/003754971770619893:9(737-748)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1177/0037549717706198
Aloi GCaliciuri GFortino GGravina RPace PRusso WSavaglio C(2017)Enabling IoT interoperability through opportunistic smartphone-based mobile gatewaysJournal of Network and Computer Applications10.1016/j.jnca.2016.10.01381:C(74-84)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jnca.2016.10.013
Zhang YTu ZWang Q(2017)TempoRecMobile Networks and Applications10.1007/s11036-017-0864-322:6(1182-1191)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11036-017-0864-3
Pace PAloi GCaliciuri GFortino G(2016)A Mission-Oriented Coordination Framework for Teams of Mobile Aerial and Terrestrial Smart ObjectsMobile Networks and Applications10.1007/s11036-016-0726-421:4(708-725)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11036-016-0726-4
Pace PAloi GCaliciuri GFortino GManzoni PPalazzi CBujari A(2015)Management and Coordination Framework for Aerial-Terrestrial Smart Drone NetworksProceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Experiences with the Design and Implementation of Smart Objects10.1145/2797044.2797047(37-42)Online publication date: 7-Sep-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2797044.2797047
Öztürk MCİL İZengin A(2015)Development of a Multi-Agent Framework for Software QualityACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/2693208.269323440:1(1-10)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2693208.2693234
Lo SWang LKeh HLin Y(2010)A novel strategy approach for agent-based resource management systemWSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications10.5555/1852534.18525397:5(651-660)Online publication date: 1-May-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1852534.1852539
Cucurull JMartí RNavarro-Arribas GRobles SBorrell J(2009)Full mobile agent interoperability in an IEEE-FIPA contextJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2009.06.03882:12(1927-1940)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2009.06.038
Cucurull JMartí RNavarro-Arribas GRobles SOvereinder BBorrell J(2009)Agent mobility architecture based on IEEE-FIPA standardsComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2008.11.03832:4(712-729)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.comcom.2008.11.038
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents