A mobile agent platform for IN based service environments

Today distributed object technology/object-oriented middleware, such as OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), has gained considerable acceptance in the telecommunications systems. In addition, mobile agent technology is currently gaining momentum in the telecommunications domain, too. Up to now, various mobile agent platforms have been developed in academia and industry, which have been based on different programming languages and middleware. Furthermore most of these are designed for specific application areas. Hence in the last years mobile agent technology had to be regarded as another technology incompatible with current distributed object technology. Fortunately there is today a common understanding that mobile agent technology should be seen as an enhancement of distributed object technology rather than a replacement. The reason is that both technologies offer advantages in different aspects, which only collectively provide the maximum flexibility in application design. Therefore the OMG work on a Mobile Agent System Interoperability Facility (MASIF) specification, designed to enable the interoperability between different agent systems, can be regarded as a milestone on the road toward a unified distributed mobile object middleware, which enables technology and location transparent interactions between static and mobile objects. This paper introduces the basic features of the first available MASIF-conformant intelligent mobile agent platform-Grasshopper developed by GMD FOKUS and IKV++-and illustrates how this platform can be used to implement an MA-based IN environment. This paper represents a progress report on former research activities in this area.