Agent and Object Technologies for High-end Collaborative Applications
Mustaque Ahamad, Raja Das, Karsten Schwan, Sumeer Bhola, Fabián E. Bustamante, Greg Eisenhauer, Jeremy Heiner, Vijaykumar Krishnaswamy, Todd Rose, Beth Schroeder and Dong Zhou
In Proc. of the 1997 Dartmouth Workshop on Transportable Agents, 1997.
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
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Abstract
Complex distributed collaborative applications have rich computational and communication needs that cannot easily be met by the currently available web based software infrastructure. In this position paper, we claim that to address the needs of such highly demanding applications, it is necessary to develop an integrated framework that both supports high performance executions via distributed objects and makes use of agent based computations to address dynamic application behavior, mobility, and security needs. Specifically, we claim that based on application needs and resource availability, it should be possible for an application to switch at runtime between the remote invocation and evaluation mechanisms of the object and agent technologies being employed. To support such dynamically configurable applications, we identify several issues that arise for the required integrated object-agent system. These include: (1) system support for agent and object executions and (2) the efficient execution of agents and high performance object implementations using performance techniques like caching, replication, and fragmentation of the state being accessed and manipulated. We are currently developing a system supporting high end collaborative applications.
