Silvan Kaiser

ASGARD – A Graphical Monitoring Tool for Distributed Agent Infrastructures

Monitoring the runtime behaviour of a distributed agent system for debugging or demonstration purposes provides a challenge to agent system developers. As a lot of the components in such a system are possibly executed on several different physical systems, maintaining an overview over the complete environment is extremely difficult. Methods taken from the development of monolithic software projects such as log files, debug outputs or step-by-step execution of a program do not easily translate to these scenarios due to the distributed nature of the system. In this paper we describe our concept for a graphical monitoring and management tool “ASGARD” (Advanced Structured Graphical Agent Realm Display), which provides an easy-to-use and intuitively understandable method for monitoring and demonstrating Multi Agent System Infrastructures. ASGARD provides a graphical representation of the connected systems using a 3D visualization. The very promising results from empirical evaluation show that an administrator’s overview over such MAS at runtime is vastly improved.

A Multi-agent Approach to Professional Software Engineering

The community of agent researchers and engineers has produced a number of interesting and mature results. However, agent technology is still not widely adopted by industrial software developers or software companies--possibly because existing frameworks are infused with academic premises that rarely apply to industrial settings. In this paper, we analyse the requirements of current industry-driven software projects and show how we are able to cope with these requirements in the Java Intelligent Agent Componentware agent framework, JIACi¾źV. We argue that the lack of industry-grade requirements and features in other agent frameworks is one of the reasons for the slow acceptance of agent technology in the software industry. The JIACi¾źV framework tries to bridge that gap--not as a final solution, but as a stepping stone towards industrial acceptance.

Applying JIAC V to real world problems: the MAMS case

In this paper we describe the execution platform for the MAMS service framework which provides an infrastructure for the creation, deployment and execution of service compositions created by non-IT-experts. The MAMS framework consists of an elaborate graphical service creation environment as well as the service execution platform based on intelligent agents which we describe in this paper. Our platform provides a flexible service execution environment, which utilizes agent technology to improve scalability, management and stability. Furthermore, it serves as a testing ground for enhanced features like service matching, runtime load balancing and self healing mechanisms.

MAMS Service Framework

In this paper we describe the service platform for the MAMS framework which is an agent based platform for the creation, deployment and execution of service compositions created by non-IT-experts. Our platform provides a flexible service execution environment, which utilises agent technology to improve scalability, platform & service management and stability.

Advanced Grid Management Software for Seamless Services

Even though common Grid Management Software, like Condor or the SUN Grid Engine, features sophisticated functionality to execute and observe jobs on a computing Grid, it often lacks a comprehensive support for multi-modal access, security, accounting and advanced messaging. To tackle these shortcomings, the concept of an agent-based Advanced Grid Management Software is introduced. The approach envisions a multi-agent architecture forming an additional access and management layer which rests on top of conventional Grid Management Software implementations. Agents are supposed to remedy the aforementioned deficiencies by providing value-added services which extend the basic functionalities of the underlying Grid. An agent-based service platform for multi-modal access is used to feature an enhanced user interface to the functionality offered by the Advanced Grid Management Software.

Telemedical applications and grid technology

Due to the experience in the exploitation of previous European telemedicine projects an open Euro-Mediterranean consortium proposes the Virtual Euro-Mediterranean Hospital (VEMH) initiative. The provision of the same advanced technologies to the European and Mediterranean Countries should contribute to their better dialogue for integration. VEMH aims to facilitate the interconnection of various services through real integration which must take into account the social, human and cultural dimensions. VEMH will provide a platform consisting of a satellite and terrestrial link for the application of medical e-learning, real-time telemedicine and medical assistance. The methodologies for the VEMH are medical-needs-driven instead of technology-driven. They supply new management tools for virtual medical communities and allow management of clinical outcomes for implementation of evidence-based medicine. Due to the distributed character of the VEMH Grid technology becomes inevitable for successful deployment of the services. Existing Grid Engines provide basic computing power needed by todays medical analysis tasks but lack other capabilities needed for communication and knowledge sharing services envisioned. When it comes to heterogeneous systems to be shared by different institutions especially the high level system management areas are still unsupported. Therefore a Metagrid Engine is needed that provides a superset of functionalities across different Grid Engines and manages strong privacy and Quality of Service constraints at this comprehensive level.