The Role of Mobile Agents in M-commerce

Mobile agents are self-contained processes, dispatched by their principal, roaming the Internet to access data and services, and carrying out their decision-making and problem-solving tasks remotely. M-commerce, the traditional E-commerce combined with mobile devices and wireless networks, is likely to become a major business model in the near future. Due to the flexibility and mobility, mobile agent based M-commerce can complement the existing client/server based E-commerce model to enable consumers to conduct business without time and space restrictions. In this paper, we propose a system infrastructure for M-commerce applications. The proposal benefits mobile consumers who wish to access a wide choice of products and services on an anywhere and anytime basis. We have implemented an experimental system that provides programming languages and virtual machines, and also integrates the service discovery and database access functionalities.