A calculus based on the agent-place model

We introduce a new CCS-like process calculus for mobile agents called the AP (Agent and Place)-calculus. The calculus is based on the agent-place model which is a basis for mobility of an agent language Telescript by White (1996). A number of mobile calculi such as /spl pi/-calculus, Mobile Ambients have been proposed as foundational calculi which are intended to describe the canonical model of computation. However the AP-calculus is not developed as a foundational calculus, but rather as a practical formalism for specifying and verifying mobile applications such as electronic commerce. We present the AP-calculus and its operational semantics and give a simple example specification of an intelligent agent roaming about the network to find out the information in order to demonstrate its applicability.