Configuration

Once a new instance of the AgentSystem is created it reads it configuration from a text file which has to be given as parameter when starting the System. The configuration file is read and parsed by the class Configuration. It can contain comments which are identified by a leading ``#'' at the beginning of the line and empty lines which contain only tabulators or spaces. All other lines are interpreted as a section label or a key / value pair. The configuration is divided into several sections. Every section has a label which has the form [name of section]. The first section is labeled [SYSTEM]. This section contains all parameter for the platform means for the class AgentSystem. At the time of writing there are the following parameters known to the System:

• NAME sets the name of the Agent System. This name should be unique in the computer where the System is running on.
• WAITFORSHUTDOWN sets the time the System is waiting for all Agents to die. As parameter you have to give the time in 100ms steps. Like the parameter 10 means the Systems waits 1000ms or 1 second for all Agents to terminate. See on page .

The second section labeled [STARTUP] contains all things that have to be done on starting the Agent System. In this version of TAgents it contains only a list of System Agents that have to be loaded when starting the platform. The syntax is LOAD=name_of_SysAgent where the name is the full name (containing all package names) of the derived System Agent (without the .class extension). One should load at least an admin System Agent when starting the platform to be able to administrate it, e.g. to start other System Agents or Agents. This is the only option now which has the same key for one or more values.

The other sections contain parameters for some System Agents. They are labeled as [full_name_of_SystemAgent]. For example the section containing parameters for the RMICommService would be named
[tagents.sysagent.communication.RMICommService]. For details on the parameters of the services see the sections describing them.

For an example see appendix on page .