AgentBuilder®
Reticular Systems, Inc.
AgentBuilder® is an integrated tool suite for constructing intelligent sof
tware agents. AgentBuilder consists of two major components - the Toolkit and
the Run-Time System. The AgentBuilder Toolkit includes tools for managing the
agent-based software development process, analyzing the domain of agent operat
ions, designing and developing networks of communicating agents, defining beha
viors of individual agents, and debugging and testing agent software. The Run-
Time System includes an agent engine that provides an environment for executio
n of agent software.
Agents constructed using AgentBuilder communicate using the Knowledge Query an
d Manipulation Language (KQML) and support the performatives defined for KQML.
In addition, AgentBuilder allows the developer to define new interagent commu
nications commands that suit his particular needs.
All components of both the AgentBuilder Toolkit and the Run-Time System are im
plemented in Java. This means that agent development can be accomplished on an
y machine or operating system that supports Java and has a Java development en
vironment. Likewise, the agents created with the AgentBuilder Toolkit are Java
programs so they can be executed on any Java virtual machine. Software develo
pers can create powerful intelligent agents in Java that execute on a wide var
iety of computer platforms and operating systems.
The AgentBuilder toolkit is designed to provide the agent software developer w
ith an integrated environment for quickly and easily constructing intelligent
agents and agent-based software.
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AgenTalk: Describing Multiagent Coordination Protocols®
NTT and Ishida
AgenTalk is a coordination protocol description language for multiagent system
s. In the distributed artificial intelligence area, many coordination protocol
s such as the contract net protocol have been proposed, and many application-s
pecific protocols will be required as more software agents start to be built.
AgenTalk allows coordination protocols to be defined incrementally and to be e
asily customized to suit application domains by incorporating an inheritance m
echanism.
AgenTalk is being co-developed by NTT Communication Science Laboratories and I
shida Laboratory , Department of Information Science, Kyoto University. The so
ftware is written in Common Lisp and is only distributed in Japan.
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Agentx
International Knowledge Systems
Agentx is a second generation, state of the art, set of lightweight, high perf
ormance, and scaleable distributed computing libraries for the Java programmin
g environment. The libraries were designed to provide object request broker fa
cilities that were easier to use, faster, more compact and highly functional,
than the RMI libraries bundled with the Sun JDK or generally available Java ba
sed CORBA implementations. Unlike the aforementioned tools Agentx does not req
uire the use of an interface definition language nor force the creation of stu
b or skeleton code. In addition Agentx is fully compatible with both the Sun,
IBM, and Microsoft virtual machines as well as the latest versions of both Int
ernet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.
In addition to ORB functionality, Agentx also provides programming support for
the creation and release of autonomous mobile agents. Objects can move around
on the network, attach themselves to a host, and begin independent execution
of their program code. This new technology allows for a complex computer progr
am, or computationally intensive task, to be broken down into smaller discreet
parts and distributed across a network of heterogeneous machines for simultan
eous but independent execution. The computing devices performing the processin
g tasks might include desktop PCâs and workstations, as well Java based
network computers, or machines running a Java OS. Using this new type of softw
are architecture, Agentx can potentially simulate the functionality of a large
mainframe or supercomputer, for only a fraction of the cost.
Agentx, is targeted for sale to information systems groups within military, go
vernment, educational and corporate organizations, as well as to independent s
oftware companies for integration into their own products. For further informa
tion, or to obtain a white paper, visit their website, or contact Marc Schneid
erman, Chief Scientist via email at mschneid@iks.com.
