DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 DOT versus Agent Technology in Telecommunication Applications Tianning Zhang GMD FOKUS

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Distributed Object Technology Object-Based View of the Environment Based on RPC and Client/Server Paradigm PRC APIs for Co-operations

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Static Object Interoperability Syntactical specification of APIs – e.g. GDMO, IDL, ODL Pre-defined Remote APIs that stay unchanged during object life time Static Co-operation Functionality Dynamic Invocation (e.g. CORBA, Java) has to be combined with mobile source code for supporting dynamic co-operation

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Agent Technology

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Agent Technology as Alternative to DOT Autonomy –proactiveness, –goal-orientation and –personality/mental attitudes Dynamic Interoperability –social ability, –learning capability and –mobility

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Supporting Dynamic Agent Interoperability on-demand downloading of mobile code, migration of mobile code with its state, agent communication and content languages and knowledge/rule-based systems.

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Supporting Dynamic Agent Interoperability flexibility, robustness and reliability of co-operations, decentralised solutions, dynamic load balancing, sophisticated service negotiation, accumulative and knowledge-based co-operations.

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 DOT and Agent Technology - Implementation of Agents as Objects

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Agents as Objects Why – Acceptance/Popularity – Maturity – Availability (CORBA, Java/RMI) – Reusability and Extensibility via Object-Oriented paradigm

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 OMG MASIF - Standard for Mobile Agents Technology on Top of DOT Platform Create/suspend/resume/terminate agent receive agent list agents/places getMAFFinder get agent system type get agent status Register agent/place/system de-register agent/place/system lookup agent/place/system Place Agent System Region MA MAF Agent System MAF Finder Basic Agent System Services Enhanced Agent System Services Communication Channel (CORBA ORB) System-specific Agent-based and non Agent-based Applications/Actors MAF-compliant Agent-based and non Agent-based Applications/Actors

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Grasshopper(IKV++) - Implementation of MASIF Conform Agent Platform Region Registry Communication Service Transport Service Registration Service Security Service Agent Management Place Management Configuration Management Core Agency Service Place Agency GUI ORB-based Application Interface RegionRegistration Interface MAFFinder Interface AgentSystem Interface MAFAgentSystem Grasshopper-specific Interfaces MASIF-compliant Interfaces

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Grasshopper(IKV++) - Implementation of MASIF Conform Agent Platform Either CORBA/IIOP or Java/RMI as DOT Platform Agents (Mobile and Stationary) as Objects with IDL or RMI Interfaces Agent Communication via RPC Method Calls Agent Migration Based on Java/RMI or Java Serialisation

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Extending Grasshopper for FIPA Agent Communications GrasshopperACL

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 Conclusion Static Interoperability vs. Dynamic Interoperability Agent Technology as Enhancement of DOT Agents Can be Implemented Based on DOT,via Reusing Existing DOT Platforms