Software Agent Technologies 1

It is by now a cliché that there is no one, universally accepted definition of intelligent agent technology, but a number loosely related techniques. And yet there are certain themes that appear common to agent-based systems, and correspondingly, certain problems that must be addressed and overcome by all agent system builders. The aim of this paper is to briefly survey the tools and techniques that can be used to address these common issues, and that hence form a substrate for software agent systems. We begin with a review of agent communication languages, focusing particularly on the emerging standard known as KQML. We then present a thumbnail sketch of various programming languages for building agent-based systems, and go on to discuss support for ontologies, which allow agents to communicate using commonly-defined terms and concepts. We then consider other computing infrastructure support for agent-based systems, in particular, the use of client-server architectures and distributed object frameworks. Finally, we present some general comments and conclusions.