Mandrake: Multiagent Systems as a Basis for Programming Fault-Tolerant Decentralized Applications
Pages 1218 - 1220
Abstract
We define a decentralized software application as one that consists of autonomous agents that communicate through asynchronous messaging. Constructing a decentralized application involves designing agents as independent local computations that coordinate to realize the application's requirements. Moreover, a decentralized application is susceptible to faults manifested as message loss, delay, and reordering.
We contribute Mandrake, a programming model for decentralized applications that addresses these challenges. Specifically, we adopt the construct of an information protocol that specifies messaging between agents purely in causal terms and can be correctly enacted by agents in a shared-nothing environment over nothing more than unreliable, unordered transport. Mandrake facilitates: implementing protocol-compliant agents by introducing a programming model; transforming fragile protocols into fault-tolerant ones with simple annotations; and a declarative policy language that makes it easy to implement fault-tolerance in agents based on the capabilities in protocols. In obviating the reliance on reliability and ordering guarantees in the communication infrastructure, Mandrake achieves some of the goals of the founders of networked computing from the 1970s.
References
[1]
AMQP. 2014. Advanced Message Queuing Protocol. http://www.amqp.org Accessed 2022-03--28.
[2]
Matteo Baldoni, Cristina Baroglio, Amit K. Chopra, Nirmit Desai, Viviana Patti, and Munindar P. Singh. 2009. Choice, Interoperability, and Conformance in Interaction Protocols and Service Choreographies. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS). IFAAMAS, Budapest, 843--850. https://doi.org/10.5555/1558109.1558129
[3]
Amit K. Chopra and Munindar P. Singh. 2016. From Social Machines to Social Protocols: Software Engineering Foundations for Sociotechnical Systems. In Proceedings of the 25th International World Wide Web Conference. ACM, Montréal, 903--914. https://doi.org/10.1145/2872427.2883018
[4]
Samuel H. ChristienUmErAL V, Amit K. Chopra, and Munindar P. Singh. 2023 a. Mandrake: Multiagent Systems as a Basis for Programming Fault-Tolerant Decentralized Applications -- Journal-First Abstract. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS). IFAAMAS, London, 1--2.
[5]
Samuel H. ChristienUmErAL V, Munindar P. Singh, and Amit K. Chopra. 2023 b. Kiko: Programming Agents to Enact Interaction Protocols. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS). IFAAMAS, London, 1--9.
[6]
Henning Kagermann, Wolfgang Wahlster, and Johannes Helbig. 2013. Recommendations for implementing the strategic initiative INDUSTRIE 4.0: Securing the future of German manufacturing industry.
[7]
Irakli Nadareishvili, Ronnie Mitra, Matt McLarty, and Mike Amundsen. 2016. Microservice architecture: aligning principles, practices, and culture. O'Reilly Media, Inc.
[8]
Frank Pallas, Philip Raschke, and David Bermbach. 2020. Fog Computing as Privacy Enabler. IEEE Internet Computing, Vol. 24, 04 (jul 2020), 15--21.
[9]
Jerome H. Saltzer, David P. Reed, and David D. Clark. 1984. End-To-End Arguments in System Design. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, Vol. 2, 4 (Nov. 1984), 277--288. https://doi.org/10.1145/357401.357402
[10]
Munindar P. Singh. 2011. Information-Driven Interaction-Oriented Programming: BSPL, the Blindingly Simple Protocol Language. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS). IFAAMAS, Taipei, 491--498. https://doi.org/10.5555/2031678.2031687
[11]
Munindar P. Singh and Amit K. Chopra. 2017. The Internet of Things and Multiagent Systems: Decentralized Intelligence in Distributed Computing. In Proceedings of the 37th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS). IEEE, Atlanta, 1738--1747. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS.2017.304 Blue Sky Thinking Track.
[12]
Michael Winikoff. 2007. Implementing Commitment-Based Interactions. In Proceedings of the 6th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS). IFAAMAS, Honolulu, 868--875. https://doi.org/10.1145/1329125.1329283
[13]
Pinar Yolum and Munindar P. Singh. 2002. Commitment Machines. In Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL 2001) (LNAI, Vol. 2333). Springer, Seattle, 235--247.
Index Terms
- Mandrake: Multiagent Systems as a Basis for Programming Fault-Tolerant Decentralized Applications
Recommendations
Kiko: Programming Agents to Enact Interaction Models
AAMAS '23: Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent SystemsRealizing a multiagent system involves implementing member agents who interact based on a protocol while making decisions in a decentralized manner. Current programming models for agents offer poor abstractions for decision making and fail to adequately ...
Interaction-Oriented Programming: Intelligent, Meaning-Based Multiagent Systems
AAMAS '23: Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent SystemsInteraction-Oriented Programming (IOP) is an approach for engineering decentralized multiagent systems based in the idea of modeling interaction meaning. Modeling meaning enables agents to make flexible decentralized decisions. IOP addresses the key ...
Mandrake: multiagent systems as a basis for programming fault-tolerant decentralized applications
AbstractWe conceptualize a decentralized software application as one constituted from autonomous agents that communicate via asynchronous messaging. Modern software paradigms such as microservices and settings such as the Internet of Things evidence a ...
Comments
Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
May 2023
3131 pages
ISBN:9781450394321
- General Chairs:
- Noa Agmon,
- Bo An,
- Program Chairs:
- Alessandro Ricci,
- William Yeoh
Sponsors
Publisher
International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
Richland, SC
Publication History
Published: 30 May 2023
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
Funding Sources
- NSF
- EPSRC
Conference
AAMAS '23
Sponsor:
AAMAS '23: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
May 29 - June 2, 2023
London, United Kingdom
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,155 of 5,036 submissions, 23%
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 28Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)4
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 09 Jan 2025
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in