Agents and System Agents

The main problem of the Agents is that they are not really separated in their execution from the platform. This can only be achieved by the use of own threads for all calls to methods from the Agent. The usage of the stop and concludetypeset@protect @@footnote SF@gobble@opt The conclude method of a TAgent is never called in the whole System anyway. methods is not defined and it cannot stop an Agent. Stopping and terminating an Agent is not a trivial tasks in Java due to the disadvantages in controlling threads, but it can be made as secure as possible by the use of threads and an improved AgentLoader.

The mechanism to offer and access resources goes through calls to method signed by a special word at the beginning of the method name. Java provides through the use of interfaces a far better possibility to just make a group of methods available for another object. This is the main field of use for interfaces in programs. The Agent has to know the exact syntax of the methods anyway to be able to call them. Also is the direct way (or through proxies) faster then the invoking of a method using the reflection API of Java. At the end the use of interface provides a faster and cleaner way to offer and access resources. The next thing which is missing is the infrastructure to offer and to look for the resources offered by the System Agents. Neither the platform nor the helpers have methods for accessing / providing the resources offered by System Agents. There exist only the two methods in the TAgentSys class which are designed for handling resources.

As one can see there were several things missing in the old platform and several thing would have to be rewritten to achieve the requirements for this diploma thesis. The basic old TAgents System is lacking a appropriate design for the new requirements for Agents as well as for System Agents and communication. It would have been at least the same work to correct these things as to design and implement a new System, which would have a good basic design at the end.