200 likes | 333 Views
The OMG Mobile Agent System Interoperability Facility. Presentation. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD) Research Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) Intelligent Mobile Agent Center of Competence (IMA-CC). What is MASIF?.
E N D
Presentation Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD) Research Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) Intelligent Mobile Agent Center of Competence (IMA-CC)
What is MASIF? • MASIF is the first mobile agent standard of the Object Management Group (OMG) • MASIF • enables interoperability between agent platforms of different vendors • considers demands & capabilities of existing agent products • integrates RPC paradigm and MA technology • benefits from already existing CORBA standards • Current participants • Crystaliz, General Magic, GMD FOKUS, IBM, The Open Group Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
Agent Platform (Type 4) Agent Platform (Type 1) MASIF Agent Platform (Type 3) Agent Platform (Type 2) MASIF Objective Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF History • Nov. 1995 - OMG issued RFP3 for a Mobile Agent Facility (MAF) • Several submissions provided during 1996/1997 • Jun. 1997 - Joint submission finished (Crystaliz, General Magic, GMD FOKUS, IBM, The Open Group) • Dec. 1997 - Presentation at OMG Technical Meeting, Revision Task Force was set-up Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF History (cont.) • Feb. 1998 - Successful membership vote, Acceptance of MASIF as OMG Technology by the Board of Directors • Mar. 1998 - Acceptance of the final specification (ftp://ftp.omg.org/pub/docs/orbos/98-03-09.pdf) Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
What to Standardize? Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
Agent: Entity which acts autonomously on behalf of a person or organization Agent System: Platform for the execution of agents Place: Context within an agent system in which an agent is executed Region: Set of agent systems with a finder Finder: Registry for locating agents, places, and agent systems Model of the Distributed Agent Environment Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Actual StateCurrent Standardization Topics • Agent management • Creation/termination, suspension/resumption of agents • Agent tracking • Localization of agents in a distributed environment • Agent transfer • Transfer of agent state and classes • Naming of agents and agent systems • Standardized syntax and semantics of agent and agent system names Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Actual State (cont.) • Agent system type and location syntax • Consideration/integration of common CORBA services • Security, Naming, Life Cycle, Externalization Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
Registration Component MAFFinder RPC MAFAgentSystem MAFAgentSystem Agent Manager MAFAgentSystem IDL Interface MASIF Actual StateThe Distributed Agent Environment O R B • Register agent/place/agent system • Lookup agent/place/agent/system • Deregister agent/place/agent system • Creation, suspension, resumption, • and termination of agents • Receive agent • Fetch class • Get agent authinfo/agent status • List agents/places • Get agent system info/finder • Find nearby agent system of type Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Implementations • Aglets Workbench (IBM) • MASIF compliance is planned. • MOA (The Open Group) • MASIF compliance is planned in the context of the ESPRIT research project ANIMA. • Grasshopper (IKV++) • MASIF compliance was considered from the beginning. • Release 1.1 commercially available now (www.ikv.de/products/grasshopper.html). Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Issues • Supports different representations of agent state tagged by an assigned number • No standardized internal interfaces (agents can be but do not need to be CORBA objects) • Leaves freedom to implementors, i.e. it covers also Java based platforms, but • Additional agreements between platform implementors are necessary to achieve interoperability Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Future Work Issues • Realization of MASIF compliant implementations • Test of interoperability • Development of applications on top of these platforms • Based on experiences made: • Refinements of current standard • Identification of new issues • Enhancements of current IDL interfaces Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Future Work Issues(cont.) • Based on experiences made (cont.): • Higher level of interoperability between distinguished Java-based agent systems • serialization format, internal agent system capabilities • security, communication • Integration of further common CORBA services (e.g. Trading Service) • Co-operation with other standardization bodies (FIPA) Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Future Work Issues(cont.) • Platform Management Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Future Work Issues(cont.) • Platform Management (cont.) Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
MASIF Future Work Issues(cont.) • Platform Management (cont.):Standardized Monitoring and Control of local resources, e.g.: • Memory (existing, available) • CPU (performance, utilization) • Hardware (devices, states) • Software (installed, running) • System (processes, logfiles) • Network (protocols) Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
Summary • MASIF specification is complete & accepted • Current submission = basis for making experiences with interoperability of mobile agent platforms • Additional OMG agent standards will probably follow by means of further RFPs • Tasks: • Realization of MASIF compliant mobile agent platforms • Realization of applications based on MASIF • Co-operation with other standardization bodies Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci
Agent System Agent System Agent System Agent System Agent System Agent System Trading Service Trading Service Trading Service MASIF Future Work IssuesExample: Trading Service • Search constraints on properties • Interface for linking registry of different regions Dr.-Ing. Stefan Covaci