System Agents

The base of every System Agent is the class SysAgent. It implements the AgentIFace to provide a common set of methods for both Agents and System Agents. The System Agent uses as the Agent a helper for accessing the System routines. This helper, the SysAgentHelper, is set when instantiating a System Agent.

The SysAgentHelper provides methods for register, unregister and to get a proxy. It also provides the methods needed by the communication services as they are mentioned already in the description of the AgentSystem class. To repeat it, these are prepareForMove, transferOK, fetchClasses and receiveAgent. A detailed description follows in the next subsection. To be mentioned also are the print methods for the output framework and the rest of the methods that are used to get information about the System.

There exist already three different kinds of System Agents. The communication services handle all communication and are implementing each one a different protocol. The MAFFinder service provides the System with a standard conform region registry. The admin System Agent provide the System with a user interface to let the user control the System, like to start Agents.