Agent-Oriented Software Construction

Why Software Agents?
- Open and dynamic enviroments are becoming more widespread every day. This is predominantly due to the increased role the web is playing in everyday life. As a result software is need that can work in an open and dynamic environment. It must be fluid and efficient in its tasks. Software agents are designed specifically to solve these issues.

Characteristics of Agents:

Reactive - An agent senses its environment and reacts to changes in a timely fashion

Autonomous - An agent has control over its own actions. It operates without the intervention of any other agent (or human)

Pro-active - An agent is goal-oriented. It has an intention and acts to accomplish a certain task

Socially able - An agent can communicate with other agents

Learning (adaptive) - The behaviour of the agent can change over time

Mobile - An agent has the possibility to move around (for example mobile search agents at the internet, or agents which move from one processor to another, where more resources are available for them)

Rationality - Given the information the agent has, it will perform those actions, which takes him closer to his goal

Temporally continuous - An agent is a continuous running process, not a one-shot computation (start process terminate)

[1]