Figure 7
This figure shows execution time (in seconds) for retrieving all documents containing the word " parallel " from a remote repository, as a function of the number of documents in the repository. The top graph shows the time required by an offline http client to download the specified number of documents and search locally. The middle graph shows the time required by a transportable agent to move to the repository, search locally, and return with the results, when the security checks are turned on. The bottom graph shows the performance time when the security checks are off in the agent system.
Source publication
Transportable agents are autonomous programs. They can movethrough a heterogeneous network of computers migrating from host tohost under their own control. They can sense the state of thenetwork, monitor software conditions, and interact with other agentsor resources. The network-sensing tools allow our agents to adapt tothe network configuration a...
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Citations
... Ce type d"agent [Rhodes, 2000 ;Rus et al., 1997] est très populaire pour retrouver et analyser de grandes quantités d"information [Klusch, 1998] ...
La modélisation et la simulation des systèmes complexes sont basées principalement sur leur décomposition en sous-systèmes plus simples à manipuler. Ce découpage doit se faire de façon méthodique par l‟identification et la définition complète des différentes structures, actions et interactions qui régissent ces sous-systèmes. Généralement, le comportement du modèle global peut se déduire de l‟émergence des comportements des modèles représentant ces sous-systèmes. Plusieurs travaux de recherche et de nombreuses implémentations ont été conduits sur le thème de la modélisation et de la simulation des systèmes complexes. De ce fait, il existe aujourd‟hui une grande panoplie de méthodes, d‟outils et de produits logiciels dans ce cadre. Le travail présenté dans cette thèse est une contribution dans le domaine de la modélisation et de la simulation des systèmes complexes ; particulièrement, les processus industriels complexes. Après avoir mené une étude approfondie dans le cadre de la modélisation et de la simulation des systèmes complexes, l‟approche proposée se base principalement sur la transformation des modèles DEVS (Discrete EVent system Specification) en modèles agent afin qu‟ils soient simulables et implémentables au sein de plateformes multi-agents. En particulier, le modèle AGR (Agent/Groupe/Rôle) qui est un modèle conceptuel sous-jacent du modèle organisationnel AALAADIN, permet une décomposition d‟un système complexe en groupes d‟agents tout en déterminant toutes les interactions entre les groupes et les agents qui les composent ainsi que les rôles joués par les agents dans ces groupes. Dans l‟approche préconisée ; la décomposition du système global en sous-systèmes apparait à deux niveaux : Au niveau le plus bas ; la décomposition porte sur la division du processus global en modèles atomiques et couplés basés sur le formalisme DEVS. Ces modèles atomiques et couplés obtenus peuvent alors être formellement vérifiés et validés. A un niveau plus élevé, ces modèles sont mis en oeuvre et implémentés grâce aux Systèmes Multi-Agents (SMA). Ainsi, les modèles atomiques sont transformés en agents et les modèles couplés en groupes d‟agents. L‟environnement dans lequel évoluent les agents est représenté par l‟ensemble des données et informations partagé par les agents et qui leur sont accessibles par les transmissions de messages. Une version de ce travail a été implémentée sur la plate-forme multi-agents MAD-KIT et a abouti à l‟implémentation d‟un simulateur industriel.L‟avantage de cette démarche est son adaptabilité ainsi que les possibilités d‟extension. De plus la décomposition en sous-systèmes réduit considérablement la complexité des éléments mis en oeuvre et permet, ainsi une grande modularité et une meilleure lisibilité du système. Ce travail est réalisé en collaboration avec les départements de production et technique de liquéfaction du gaz naturel (GL1/k Skikda), un des principaux pôles d'hydrocarbures du complexe SONATRACH en Algérie.
... These agents focus more on cooperation and autonomy where as interface agents emphasis more on autonomy and learning [3]. Mobile Agent (also known as itinerant agent [11], transportable agent [12] or reloadable object [13]) has the capability of migrating from one computer to another over a network autonomously with its data intact and is http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.simpat.2014.09.005 1569-190X/Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. capable of resuming its task in the new environment [7,9]. ...
Multi-agent system consists of two or more agents which cooperate/coordinate with each other in order to solve a complex problem which would be difficult or inappropriate if solved by single agent. Multi-agents are modeled using Agent Unified Modeling Language (AUML) as Unified Modeling Language (UML) notations do not fully express agent properties/behaviors. In this paper, we have proposed Multi-Agent Modeling Toolkit (MAMT) to help a designer in building rapid multi-agent based applications. The purpose of this toolkit is to create agent development environment where the developer can have various facilities like reusability of existing/developed agents, customize built-in agents, etc. MAMT provides the designer with built-in agents which are developed using Java Agent Development (JADE) framework, with the help of these designers can rapidly build multi-agent based applications. Creation and customization of built-in agents is based on the prototype inclusion design pattern and the designer can add or modify methods/behaviors according to their requirement(s); however the changes should be based on FIPA (Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents) standards and compatible with JADE. MAMT has been evaluated on large number of sample applications; results were very promising and encourage the use of toolkit.
... Agent-based deployment approaches, like software dock [44] and TACOMA [45], use mobile agents for the purpose of software deployment. A mobile agent is defined as an object that migrates through many hosts in a heterogeneous network, under its own control, to perform tasks using resources of those hosts [59]. Deployment of component-based applications into computational grids has been the subject of extensive research [46], [60], [47], [61], [62], [63], [63] . ...
With significant advances in software development technologies, it is now possible to have complex software applications, which include a large number of heterogeneous software components distributed over a large network of computers with different computational capabilities. To run such applications, their components must be instantiated on proper hardware resources in their target environments so that user requirements and constraints are also met. This process is called software deployment. However, this process is often challenging for large, distributed, component-based applications with many constraints and requirements. This article presents a graph-based deployment approach that does the deployment with respect to the communication resources required by application components and communication resources available on the hosts in the target environment. In our approach, component-based applications and distributed environments are modeled with the help of graphs. Deployment of an application is then defined as the mapping of the application graph to the target environment graph. This article further discusses how this mapping could be done to minimize the cost and to maximize the reliability of deployments.
... A mobile agent is defined as an object that migrates through many hosts in a heterogeneous network, under its own control, to perform tasks using resources of those hosts [45]. A Mobile Agent System (MAS) is defined as a computational framework that implements the mobile agent paradigm. ...
Software deployment comprises activities for placing an already developed application into its operational environment and
making it ready for use. For complex component-based applications that constitute many heterogeneous components with various
hardware and software requirements, this deployment process can become one of the most burning challenges. In this situation,
it is difficult to manually identify a valid deployment configuration that satisfies all constraints. Thus, automated tools
and techniques are required to do the complex process of software deployment. To address this requirement, a variety of tools
and techniques that support different activities of the deployment process have been introduced in both industry and academia.
This paper aims to provide an overview of these tools and techniques.
... In this section, we talk about the concept of using mobile agents in the software deployment process in more detail. In [46] a mobile agent is defined as an object which migrates through many hosts in a heterogeneous network, under its own control, in order to perform tasks using resources of those hosts. In other words, a mobile agent can perform its task autonomously without any independence to the application generated it. ...
With significant advances in software development technologies in recent years, it is now possible to have complex software applications that include a large number of heterogeneous software components distributed over a large network of computers with different computational capabilities. To run such applications, their components must be instantiated on proper hardware re-sources in their target environments so that requirements and constraints are met. This process is called software deployment. For large, distributed, component-based applications with many constraints and requirements, it is difficult to do the deployment process manually and automated tools and techniques are required. This report presents a graph-based approach for this purpose that is not dependent on any specific component technology and does the deployment planning with respect to the communication re-sources, i.e. channels, required by application components and communi-cation resources available on the hosts in the target environment. In our approach, component-based applications and distributed environments are modeled with the help of graphs. Deployment of an application is then de-fined as the mapping of the application graph to the target environment graph.
... 'Agents is a mobile agent system developed at Dartmouth College[73,212,101]. Although the project ended in 2003 and is no longer maintained, it was a very active research initiative which provided interesting results. ...
During the last years, agent technologies have witnessed an steady, if not fast, increase in popularity. Even so, its adoption, specially in commercial products has been sluggish and scant. Probably the main hurdle to a wider adoption of agent technology are the security issues involved, and the lack of sound and reliable security infrastructures in such environ-ments. This is specially relevant in mobile agent systems, where software agents have the ability to move between several execution platforms over a network. The security concerns that mobility brings to the picture, which are not present in more traditional distributed systems, have to be carefully taken into account. Among the security problems of mobile agents, an outstanding one is resource access control and authorisation management. Prac-tical mobile agent systems demand lightweight, flexible, and scalable solutions for access control in order to cope with the highly heterogeneous nature of their clients. In this thesis, we tackle the access control and authorisation management problem in mobile agent systems. We start with an analysis of the problem, the current state of the art in the field, and the most relevant available technologies for access control and authori-
... – Les agents d'information [30, 32] : ces agents qui apparaissent de plus en plus sur le marché sont dédiés à la recherche d'information, principalement sur l'internet . Il faut cependant noter que peu de logiciels de ce type méritent réellement le qualificatif d'agent (au sens de l'Intelligence Artificielle Distribuée) ; beaucoup ne sont que des programmes se déclenchant à date fixe, sans capacité d'adaptation, ni de coopération (par exemple, les nombreux logiciels de veille qui se déclenchent à heure fixe pour rechercher des informations sur un produit ou un concurrent). ...
... Such a concept was recognized as agent technology which involves sending mobile agents to the clients, where the term agent refers to a software abstraction that a user deploys to represent him in various tasks. Since this agent can migrate between nodes in the network, it has the mobility property and is thus called mobile agent [2,3]. ...
... A common platform for an agent system is a group of networked computers. An agent system that allows agents to move between hosts is a mobile agent system, thus freeing units of software from limiting their runtime existence to only one host or set of resources (e.g., [5, 22, 29, 38]). In this paper, the FIPA abstract architecture [11] is used to serve as a common language for agent terminology. ...
Security of an agent system is often limited, relying on basic cryptographic techniques without consideration of issues such as key maintenance, forming and communicating in secure groups, or interlayer security. From a security engineering perspective, multi-agent systems introduce new channels and possibly layers, resulting in additional security concerns. A comprehensive security engineering perspective - studying the information flow of the multi-layered system, identifying, analyzing and addressing multi-level security threats - is rarely taken. This paper presents a security engineering process for multi-agent systems - motivating the need for comprehensive security engineering and showing how to proceed with the process within an agent system. One of the largest obstacles in security engineering is understanding how to decompose a system into the parts that require security. This paper provides a decomposition for agent systems that can be directly applied to the security engineering process. Examples are given that detail the application of the presented security engineering process to: 1) a FIPA-compliant agent system; and 2) peer-to-peer content lookup. The most important contribution of this paper, is proposing a formal approach to addressing security within an agent system, where there exist unique and application-specific threats that must be addressed.
... We built an agent layer called Bast to move queries, predictive models, results and meta-data between the various data clusters. Bast Version 0.8 used Agent-TCL [9] to move SGML data describing queries and the other associated data and metadata managed by Bast. Bast Version 0.9 uses aglets [20] to move XML data and metadata in a language we designed for the this purpose called the Data Discovery Markup Language (DMML). ...
Data mining is a problem for which cluster computing provides a competitive alternative to specialized high performance computers for mining large data sets. Distribued clusters provide a natural infrastructure for mining large distributed data sets. Distributed clusters can be connected by commodity networks to form what we call meta-clusters and by high performance networks to form what we call super-clusters. In this paper, we describe the design of a system called Papyrus which is designed for mining data which is distributed over clusters, meta-clusters, and super-clusters. We also describe some experimental results of a preliminary implementation.
