Mobile Agents

William R. Cockayne and Michael Zyda, editors

1997 | 320 pages
ISBN: 1884777368
Out of print $48.00 Softbound print book  



RESOURCES

DESCRIPTION

Mobile Agents is the first book to give the reader the ability to create and use powerful mobile agents on the Internet. The book presents the reality of today's agent technologies and the future that this technology promises. It teaches how to create and deploy the major mobile agent systems (Telescript, Agent Tcl, Ara, Aglets Workbench) and how to solve a variety of problems on the Internet. Each of the chapters was written in collaboration with the original developers of the agent systems.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS...

William Cockayne is a researcher in advanced technologies at Pumpkin, a technology research center in Monterey, CA. His work involves humans, and is presently contributing to his Ph.D.

Michael Zyda is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. Professor Zyda's main focus in research is in the area of computer graphics, specifically the development of large-scale, networked 3D virtual environments.

Sample Chapters

Two sample chapters are available for download.

Chapter 1
Chapter 3

Introduction

The main incentive to write this book, aimed at readers who want to understand and develop mobile agents for personal or professional use, is the lack of technical agent resources in the popular press. Many of the agent systems presented in this book have never been in print before (except for conference proceedings or journals), making this the first time the nonacademic reader can access this work.

There is a huge amount of literature covering all types of computer agents and the changes that they will effect. Surveying the whole field would overstretch my competence and exhaust your patience; nor will we present a catalog of how to pick the best agent for your business and make millions from it.

What this book will provide is an in-depth look at the world of agents and the promise they hold. This promise can be seen in all of the mobile agent systems that have been developed--the book explains a few of the more dominant systems and how they work, and how to write agents and work with them. Although not a prescription, this book provides the high-level background, in-depth fundamentals, and solid code examples to help you put agents to work in your company.

How to read this book

This book presents a collection of mobile agent systems, each distinct in design and implementation, but similar in goal.

In this book:

  • We'll explain what agents are, how they operate, and what they can provide.

  • We'll help you better understand the promise the agent technologies presented here provide over today's agents.

  • We'll provide an in-depth understanding of the problems that agents can solve, and how these problems have historically been addressed using computer technology.

  • We'll explain the technical issues driving the development of agent systems.

  • We'll deliver a variety of mobile agent systems which can be used to solve today's problems, as well as address those of the future. Each of these systems is presented so that you understand the developer's goals.

  • We'll give you source code examples with analyses that explain the semantics of the agents and how they operate.

  • The enclosed CD-ROM provides all of the source code, binaries, and examples for each of the agent systems presented. Additional material on each of the systems, much of it developed by the design teams themselves, is included on the CD-ROM for you to delve further into the areas that interest you the most.

  • The CD-ROM also provides pointers to additional reading, other sources of agent information, additional groups working on these problems, and the articles and people driving this work into the future.

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    The book is presented in three sections. Chapters one and two present the exciting world of mobile agents, some of the underlying technologies, how these agents will be used to solve everyday computer problems, and visions of where agents will fit in our future networks. This first section will be of interest to the reader with little background in this area.

    Part II (chapters three, four, and five) presents comprehensive mobile agent systems not developed exclusively with Java. Telescript, Ara, and Agent Tcl are mobile agent systems which have been developed to address some of the issues discussed earlier in the book. Each chapter presents a complete Internet agent system and is co-authored by the main designer of the system. Each chapter explains why the system was developed, some of the major features of the system, the semantics of writing agents for that system, and an example to help the reader get a better grasp of the system. The chapters are written so the reader can develop complete Internet agents when he or she is done reading it.

    Part III is comprised of one main chapter and a number of sections presenting IBM's Aglets Workbench, a system designed around the Java language. At the time this book is being written, Aglet Workbench is still beta software. In addition, Java itself is still being developed. Furthermore, the development of a mobile agent system in Java isn't fully understood.

    The CD-ROM can be considered additional chapters, making it an integral part of this book. It is important to understand that the CD-ROM supplements the information presented in the book while also being an excellent resource on its own. Although the CD-ROM is physically a separate medium, and is discussed only peripherally in the chapters, please read the following "How to use the CD-ROM" section.

    How to use the CD-ROM

    The CD-ROM covers a vast amount of information which is not included in the text. In particular, many of the agent systems have additional documentation which can be found only on the CD-ROM.

    The CD-ROM also contains the complete software needed to develop and field Internet agents. It also contains references to other agent systems which have been developed, agent resources on the Internet, and tips on obtaining software updates that are developed for the included agent systems.

    To make the information on the CD-ROM easier to navigate, the documentation is in .html pages which are viewable with any Web browser on all platforms. To begin playing with the agent systems, load the CD-ROM into the computer, open the Web browser on the computer, and open the file welcome.html. Feel free to look around.