Coordination Technologies for Internet Agents

Internet applications are typically made up autonomous, network-aware and mobile entities (Internet agents), which are of an intrinsic  interactive nature. In this context, the definition of appropriate coordination models, languages and architectures is a key issue for the effective design and development of multiagent Internet applications. The first part of the tutorial sketches the main concepts related to coordination on the Internet, and surveys the proposals of well-known agent systems (Aglets, Ara, Telescript, Mole). The second part focuses on tuple-based coordination models and details the characteristics of several commercial and research systems (JavaSpaces, TSpaces, PageSpace, Lime, MARS and TuCSoN). Two application examples (distributed information retrieval and workflow management) are taken as case studies thorough the tutorial to evaluate the impact of different coordination models and architectures in application design and execution.
Objective of the tutorial is to give attendees an in-deep understanding of the problems related to interaction and coordination in Internet applications based on network-aware and mobile agents. In particular, the attendees will acquire a global view of the currently available coordination techniques and will learn how the choice of a suitable coordination model can positively impact on multiagent systems and can help managing the specific problems of agent-based Internet applications.