Write Once, Move Anywhere: Toward Dynamic Interoperability of Mobile Agent Systems
Report by Dartmouth Department of Computer Science
Abstract
Mobile agents are an increasingly popular paradigm, and in recent years there has been a proliferation of mobile-agent systems. These systems are, however, largely incompatible with each other. In particular, agents cannot migrate to a host that runs a different mobile-agent system. Prior approaches to interoperability have tried to force agents to use a common API, and so far none have succeeded. Our goal, summarized in the catch phrase “Write Once, Move Anywhere,” led to our efforts to develop mechanisms that support dynamic runtime interoperability of mobile-agent systems. This paper describes the Grid Mobile-Agent System, which allows agents to migrate to different mobile-agent systems.