Communication Services

The communication service was designed to handle all communication which could be in the TAgents Mobile Agent System. The two parts who could need to communicate over the net are the Agents and the System Agents. The platform itself does not need communication at all. The System Agents who actually need communication are the communication services, they are using their own routines, and the MAFFinder which is handled specific by the communication services.

Figure: General Structure of a Communication Services

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The Figure on page gives a general overview about the parts of a communication service. The main class is the System Agent itself which maintains all other parts and wraps the method calls through. The proxies for the in- / and output can be implemented in the same class or in two different classes, depending on the protocol used.

When an Agent uses the communication service, it calls methods of the AgentCommProxy registered in the System. These calls are wrapped through to the calls in the communication service. The communication service preprocesses the calls (like handling internally asynchronous messages) and passes the calls then to the proxy for the output to the other Agent System. The return values are passed the same way back.

When there comes a call from another Agent System it is received by the input proxy. The input proxy gives the calls directly through to the communication service which processes the calls. When a call needs some changes of the System, the responding method of the SysAgentHelper is called and this call is wrapped to the System itself. Messages are called on the AgentLoader of the receiving Agent which is gotten from the System. The return value is passed the same way back.