Description
WIT Press Mobile Agents Principles of Operation and Applications 2007 Edition by Alessandro Genco
Multi-agent systems are one of the most effective software design paradigms, and they are considered to be the most recent evolutionary step of object-oriented programming. Agents have several advantages when compared with objects. The most important among them is to be made of active code, which is capable of acting autonomously. Agents can be a suitable choice to exploit the Internet reality, since users can operate easily in a less compelling way and also reduce Internet connection time. Mobile agents thus make a PC an intelligent entity able to autonomously accomplish boring human tasks, starting from document search up to actual business negotiations. Mobile agents allow a human owner to decide if and when his intervention is suitable or required.The book describes the mobile agent principles of operation in detail. It starts from giving some definitions, and illustrates their main features such as mobility, communication, coordination, interoperability, fault tolerance and security. Comparisons of these features between most relevant multi-agent developing platforms are then discussed.The book ends with a discussion on a mobile agent application field, data mining and information retrieval namely, thus showing how mobile agents can help us to face these field related problems. Table of Contents : Intelligent agentsIntelligent agents; Classes of agents; Agents properties; Complexity and coherence; Ethical abstractions; Intelligent communication languages; Mobile agents training; Agents systems implementation; Behaviours and actions management; ReferencesMobilityStrong and weak migration; Mobile agents migration methods in Java;Mobile agent itinerary planning; ReferencesCommunicationIntroduction; Effective communication; Reliable communication by means of mobile groups; Coordination through communication; Knowledge sharing effort (KSE); Synchronization; Location; Models; Message-passing; Cost estimation; Fault causes; Complexity; Security; ReferencesCoordinationIntroduction; Coordination in mobile agent systems; Coordination models; Coordination languages and Berlinda; Implementation of coordination models; Definition of coordinables; Projects in progress; ReferencesInteroperabilityIntroduction; CORBA; OMG MASIF; FIPA; ReferencesFault toleranceIntroduction; Models of malfunction; Fault tolerant services; Structural principles of programming; Languages for fault tolerant programming; Fault tolerance through mobile agents; Possible faults; Conditions and requisites for a fault tolerant execution; Fault tolerant mobile agent; Checkpointing; Replication; Exactly-once execution property violation; TRB; SRB; Main differences between SRB and TRB; Existing solutions; ReferencesSecurity in mobile agent systemsSecurity in the network; Mobile agent systems security models; Attacks to mobile agent systems security; Protocols and techniques for mobile agents security; Agent protection protocols; Environmental key system; Resistance to attacks; Safe agent transfer; Safety in mobile agent platforms; Monitoring and security;Future scenarios; Conclusions; ReferencesData mining and information retrievalIntroduction; Design and implementation of a data mining system; Data collection with mobile agents; Request for information and proxy caches; Route planning; Performance evaluation; Distributed knowledge nets; Application examples; References