Abstract
Agent-based solutions promise to ameliorate Web services, by promoting the modular construction of Web servers, relieving the network from transferring useless data, supporting user mobility, etc. However, existing Web servers do not favor the hosting of agents. This paper proposes a description of agent behavior in terms of its requirements regarding resource utilization (e.g. memory, and disk space), functional services (e.g. system calls), and non-functional properties (e.g. degree of replication, and access control). When formally expressed, these requirements can be used in an automated decision process, which is based on software specification matching techniques. Upon the acceptance of an agent, the host uses these requirements to construct an environment customized to agent's execution. We discuss the benefits of this approach, and how it can be used to promote existing agent-based solutions in the Web framework.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
ACM Press, “Intelligent agents,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 37(7), 1994.
R. Allen and D. Garlan, “A formal basis for architectural connection,” ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, vol. 6(3), pp. 213–249, 1997.
C. Bidan and V. Issarny, “Dealing with multi-policy security in large open distributed systems,” in Proceedings of the 5th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, LNCS 1485, Springer-Verlag, 1998, pp. 51–66.
L. Cardelli and A. D. Gordon, “Mobile ambients,” in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Foundations of Software Science and Computational Structures, LNCS 1378, Springer-Verlag, 1998, pp. 140–155.
FSE Document, Failures divergence refinement: User manual and tutorial, 1.3 edition, Technical Report, Formal Systems (Europe) Ltd., Oxford, England, 1993.
OMG Document, CORBAservices: Common Object Services Specification, Technical Report, Object Management Group, November 1997. Available at http://www.omg.org/corba/csindx.htm.
V. Issarny, “Configuration-based programming systems,” in Proceedings of SOFSEM'97: Theory and Practice of Informatics, 1997, pp. 183–200.
V. Issarny, C. Bidan, and T. Saridakis, “Achieving middleware customization in a configuration-based development environment: Experience with the Aster prototype,” in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Configurable Distributed Systems, 1998, pp. 275–283.
V. Issarny, C. Bidan, and T. Saridakis, “Characterizing coordination architectures according to their non-functional execution properties,” in Proceedings of the Thirty First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 1998, pp. 275–285.
J. Kramer and J. Magee, “Exposing the skeleton in the coordination closet,” in Proceedings of COORDINATION'97: Coordination Languages and Models, LNCS 1282, Springer-Verlag, 1997, pp. 18–31.
A. Lingnau, O. Drobnik, and P. Dömel, “An HTTP-based infrastructure for mobile agents,” in Proceedings of the 4th International World Wide Web Conference, 1995, pp. 461–472.
N. Medvidovic and R. Taylor, “A framework for classifying and comparing architecture description languages,” in Proceedings of the Joint 6th European Software Engineering Conference-5th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, 1997, pp. 60–76.
R. Mili, R. Mittermeir, and A. Mili, “Storing and retrieving software components: A refinement based system,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 23(7), pp. 445–460, 1997.
M. Moriconi, X. Qian, and R. A. Riemenschneider, “Correct architecture refinement,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 21(4), pp. 356–372, 1995.
G. C. Necula and P. Lee, “Safe, untrusted agents using proof-carrying code,” in Mobile Agents and Security, LNCS 1419, Springer-Verlag, 1998.
S. Perret and A. Duda, “Mobile assistant programming for efficient information access on the WWW,” in Proceedings of the Fifth International World Wide Web Conference, 1996, pp. 1373–1384.
D. E. Perry, “The inscape environment,” in Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Software Engineering, 1989, pp. 2–12.
D. E. Perry and A. L. Wolf, “Foundations for the study of software architecture,” ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, vol. 17(4), pp. 40–52, 1992.
T. Saridakis, V. Issarny, and C. Bidan, “Customized remote execution of Web agents,” in Proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on System Science, January 1998, pp. 614–620.
M. Shaw, R. DeLine, D. Kelin, T. Ross, D. Young, and G. Zelesnik, “Abstraction for software architectures and tools to support them,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 21(4), pp. 314–335, 1995.
M. Shaw and D. Garlan, Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1996.
J. W. Stamos and D. K. Gifford, “Remote evaluation,” ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, vol. 12(4), pp. 537–565, 1990.
A. M. Zaremski and J. M. Wing, “Specification Matching of Software Components,” ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, vol. 6(4), pp. 333–369, 1997.
A. Zarras and V. Issarny, “A framework for systematic synthesis of transactional middleware,” in Proceedings of Middleware98-IFIP International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms and Open Distributed Processing, 1998, pp. 257–274.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Issarny, V., Saridakis, T. Defining Open Software Architectures for Customized Remote Execution of Web Agents. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 2, 237–249 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010008305297
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010008305297