Agent Based Transaction System CS790: Dr. Bruce Land Sanish Mondkar Sandeep Chakravarty

What are mobile agents? A mobile agent is an active object that can move both data and functionality (code) to multiple places within a distributed system. Mobile agents are defined in formal terms as objects that have behavior, state, and location The set of events varies a bit from model to model, but the following is a list of the most common ones: Creation, Disposal, Dispatch, Arrival, Communication

Why mobile agents? There are several applications where the mobile agents paradigm can be used successfully solve existing problems. The following is a cross-section of possible problems: User passivity/data timeliness Multi-staged/multi-processed calculations Untrusted collaborators Low-reliability/partially-disconnected networks

Project Objectives To make a framework for mobile agents which would allow agents to move from node to node and execute at each node To incorporate security features so that agent activities are securely conducted To make the framework fully customizable so that a user can create his/her own agents as easily as creating applets and still use the facilities provided by the agent framework To study existing architectures for distributed systems and investigate the possibility of how an agent-based system can solve some of the inherent problems suffered by existing systems. To create a sample application that uses some of the features provided by the agent framework to do something useful.

Applet Vs Agents Applets do not carry state Applets are instantiated by the receiving client Applets do not travel to multiple hosts

Problem Areas Transportation Authentication Secrecy Standardization

Design for Agent Host AgentServer AgentSpawner IncomingRequestMonitor RequestServicer

Design for Agent Agent is a purely abstract class having some method declaration. Users wishing to write their own agents will have to: 1. Inherit their customized agent from the abstract class Agent and implement all the methods 2. The main agent task will have to be put in a method called run. This is the method which shall be called by each receiving host while starting the agent thread.

Agent Transfer Protocol Establish connection Send agent identity Receive result object Send agent Close connections

Security Issues Authentication Controlling agent activity User option for agent acceptance

Security:Our Implementation Digital Signatures Message Digests User option for agent acceptance Possible extension to SSL

Sample Application Bill Agent Transfer Agent Info Agent

Other Approaches IBM Aglets WorkBench Java RMI

Future Work... A layer of security can be added by using SSL for the agent transfer More study is needed to understand the feasibility of having an agent-based system AI algorithms can be used for making mobile agents equipped with negotiation capabilities

Future Work…contd. For Electronic Commerce applications, there should be a mechanism by which a agent should be able to pay for the services used. More work is needed to make the Agent Host more robust in handling various agents Agents need more error handling capabilities. In case an agent dies during a task, then the sender should be informed of the failed transaction

Conclusion Agent systems for groupware Existing problems are solved eg. Webcrawlers Network bandwidth optimally utilized