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The electronic marketplace of the future will consist of a large
number of services located on an open, distributed and heterogeneous
platform, which will be used by an even larger number of clients.
Mobile Agent Systems are considered to be a precondition for the
evolution of such an electronic market. They can provide a flexible
infrastructure for this market, i.e. for the installation of new
services by service agents as well as for the utilization of these
services by client agents.
Mobile Agent Systems basically consist of a number of locations and
agents. Locations are (logical) abstractions for (physical) hosts in
a computer network. The network of locations serves as a unique and
homogeneous platform, while the underlying network of hosts may be
heterogeneous and widely distributed. Locations therefore have to
guarantee independence from the underlying hard- and software. To
make the Mobile Agent System an open platform, the system
furthermore has to guarantee security of hosts against malicious
attacks.
(User) Agents are active, autonomous software objects, that reside
(and are processed) on locations. They can communicate with other
agents either locally inside one location or globally with agents on
other locations. Mobile Agents furthermore can migrate from one
location to another. Mechanisms for the communication between agents
and for the migration of agents have to be provided by the Mobile
Agent System.
Service Agents are interfaces to services. Next to the normal
communication mechanisms between agents of the mobile agent system,
they have access to services provided by the underlying host.
Because of their machine dependent purpose, service agents are not
mobile.
The Atomas project aims in developing an open agent system as an
enabling technology for the evolution of a electronic marketplace.
This report documents the achieved results of the second year
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