System-Level Issues for Agent Based Distributed Computing

The primary focus of this paper is on the system-architecture and language level issues for agent-based distributed computing. It establishes interrelationships between the elements of an agent-based system and the components of a distributed object management system based on the CORBA model. An agent-based application system can be built as a collection of distributed objects, some of which are mobile. This paper identiies the system architecture components for supporting agent-based distributed computing. We also discuss the various issues and requirements in supporting the agent paradigm on such an object based distributed system. These requirements are identiied based on the needs arising from several diierent viewpoints related to: object mobility, fault tolerance and status monitoring, client-level control and management of its mobile agents, mechanisms for parallel execution and coordination of agents, multithreading within an agent, and security and protection of information.