可移动agent系统位置透明通信的一种实现

An Agent Location Transparent Communication Method in Mobile Agent System

在可移动的软件 Agent(Mobile Software Agent,MSA)的应用中 ,Agent并不是孤立地完成计算任务 ,它们需要不断地与其它 agent进行信息交换 ,而 agent的位置又是经常变动的 .文中提出了一种实现 agent位置透明通信的方法 ,主要解决 agent位置追踪问题和 agent迁移时的消息处理问题 .

Mobile Software Agent (MSA) is a new computing model that is more suitable for current distributed computing environment. In a MSA system, an agent is not isolate in accomplishing computing tasks. It needs to exchange some information with other agents continuously. But the location of an agent is often changed, so two problems have to be solved. First is the Agent Location Tracking, that is how to inform the current location of an agent to other agents when it migrates. Second is the message storage and transfer, that is how to handle the information that is sent to an agent when it is in the procedure of migration. This paper presents a Location Transparent Agent Communication method by using the AgentTracer and the AgentShadow. The AgentTracer is a mapping of each agent ID and its current location. When an agent is created, it gets an AgentShadow which mainly records the agent ID and the address of the AgentTracer to which it belongs. By using the AgentTracer and the AgentShadow, an agent can be traced all through its lifetime. In this paper we first describe the structure of the AgentTracer and the AgentShadow, then we present the procedure of message storage and transfer by using the AgentProxy. It has been realized in a MSA system based on Java.