Everything is Alive agent architecture

Scalable agent systems must be able to evolve and adapt to a changing environment. Everything is Alive (EiA) is a compositional middleware architecture useful in building scalable, adaptive systems, including agent systems. EiA uses plugin capabilities compatible with the Eclipse.org framework, but these capabilities are extended using the E2 platform to allow plugins to be removed or replaced. Capabilities, described in WSDL, may also be transferred to other E2 platforms using a variety of protocols. This paper describes how we developed the EiA agent system using E2 and includes descriptions of several useful plugins.