Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE

Fabio Bellifemine is a senior project manager at the Research Labs of Telecom Italia. He inspired, originated and led the JADE Project and, later, he launched and presided at the JADE Governing Board. He graduated summa cum laude from the Computer Science University of Torino in 1988 and, before joining Telecom Italia (formerly CSELT), until 1994 he was a researcher at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) working in the field of digital video coding. In 1996 he joined the FIPA standardization body and he was attracted by the software agent technology. In 2000, on behalf of the Work Package 1 of the FACTS Project, he was awarded the first prize in the FIPA competition for the best agent-based application: ‘New generation TV entertainment system’. He served as chairman of the FIPA Architecture Board and, next, of the X2S Technical Committee with the challenging goal of promoting to standard the core specifications of FIPA. The effort and the passion for this emerging technology were recognized by appreciation certificates of FIPA for his outstanding contributions. He is IEEE Senior Member, member of the Technical Committee on Distributed Intelligent Systems of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, and member of the Program Committee of some scientific conferences in this research field. He is also member of the Expert Group of JSR 271 which is going to specify the third generation of Java MIDP specifications. His research interests mainly focus on agent technologies and on their adoption to develop better and more efficient systems and applications; recently, he launched in Telecom Italia a new research program in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks. Giovanni Caire graduated summa cum laude from the Politecnico di Torino in 1992 and, after that, joined the Research Labs of Telecom Italia (formerly CSELT) where he is now a senior project manager. He started working in the Multimedia and Video Services department where he was involved in several international collaborative projects. In 1995 he led the ATMAN ACTS European Project dealing with advanced techniques of audio-visual content trading. Since 1998 his interest has been in the field of distributed applications with particular focus on the Java technology. He started working in the JADE Project in 2000 when he led the working group that ported the platform on the Java Micro Edition within the scope of the LEAP IST European Project. In 2004 he represented Telecom Italia in the Java Workstream of the OMTP international initiative whose goal was to define an open platform on mobile terminals enabling service providers to develop a uniform and simplified customer experience. In 2005 he actively participated in the Expert Group of the JSR 232 Mobile Operational Management which addressed the customization of the OSGi specification for hand-held devices. Currently he is working in the OSS Innovation department of Telecom Italia where he leads the software development of an important project employing agent technology and in particular the JADE platform in the field of network management. At the same time he is actively involved in the JADE Board with the role of Technical Leader.Dominic P. A. Greenwood is Head of Research at Whitestein Technologies AG in Z´urich, Switzerland. He has been active in the field of multi-agent software and systems for several years from both a research and commercial perspective, including participation in FIPA and involvement with JADE as a member of the JADE Board and as designer of the JADE Web Services Integration Gateway add-on. He received a Ph.D. for his work on ‘adaptive strategies for controlling non-linear behaviour in communication networks’ from Staffordshire University in 1997, after which he took a position as group leader of distributed network management research at Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe in the UK. In 2000 he joined the Network Agent Research group of Fujitsu Laboratories of America in Sunnyvale, California, where he became involved in several aspects of agent-related research and standardization. It was during this period that he became actively involved with FIPA, serving as contributor to various activities including the FIPA Abstract Architecture and as co-chair of the FIPA Ontology technical committee. He also served as technical coordinator of JSR 87, Java Agent Services, which addressed the creation of a core API for agent systems based on a reification of the FIPA Abstract Architecture. In 2003 he joined Whitestein Technologies AG in Z´urich, becoming involved in a broad variety of projects related to the commercial application of agent technology and several European-wide collaborative projects, including the JADE Board. He is a member of several program committees and has a number of academic publications, with his current research interests including distributed and complex adaptive systems, proactive computing, ubiquitous systems, service-oriented computing and commercial applications of software agent technology and autonomic computing.

"As a guide, this book is much better than online documentation because it's more comprehensive." (IEEE Distributed Systems Online) "…a comprehensive book that covers a wide range of topics related to agent-based programming with JADE." (Computing Reviews.com, October 1, 2007)

• The Authors ixList of Contributors xiPreface xiii1 Introduction 12 Agent Technology Overview 32.1 About agents 32.2 The Foundation for Intelligent, Physical Agents (FIPA) 103 The JADE Platform 293.1 Brief history 293.2 JADE and the agents paradigm 303.3 JADE architecture 323.4 Compiling the software and launching the platform 343.5 JADE packages 373.6 Message transport service 393.7 Admin and debugging tools 424 Programming with JADE – Basic Features 514.1 Creating agents 514.2 Agent tasks 574.3 Agent communication 654.4 Agent discovery: the yellow pages service 724.5 Agents with a GUI 755 Programming with JADE – Advanced Features 775.1 Ontologies and content languages 775.2 Composing behaviours to create complex tasks 915.3 Threaded behaviours 995.4 Interaction protocols 1005.5 Interacting with the AMS 1075.6 Starting JADE from an external Java application 1116 Agent Mobility 1156.1 Agent mobility 1156.2 Intra-platform mobility 1176.3 Inter-platform mobility service 1196.4 Usage of the JADE mobility services 1217 JADE Internal Architecture 1317.1 Distributed coordinated filters 1317.2 Creating a JADE kernel service 1368 Running JADE Agents on Mobile Devices 1458.1 Main limitations of the mobile environment 1458.2 The LEAP add-on 1468.3 The split container execution mode 1508.4 Developing MIDP agents 1548.5 LEAP add-on advanced 1619 Deploying a Fault-Tolerant JADE Platform 1739.1 The main replication service 1739.2 Attaching the DF to a relational DB 17610 The JADE Web Services Integration Gateway 18110.1 Web service technology 18110.2 The utility of agent and Web service integration 18210.3 The WSIG architecture 18210.4 Installation requirements 18410.5 WSIG installation procedure 18510.6 WSIG operation 18610.7 Example 1: Web service client invokes an agent service 19310.8 Example 2: Agent service invokes a Web service 20311 Agent-Society Configuration Manager and Launcher 20711.1 Basic terms and concepts 20711.2 Book-trading example 20911.3 Distributed deployment 21511.4 The XML meta-model 21811.5 Inside the ASCML 22011.6 Distributed monitoring, logging and debugging 22211.7 Outlook 22312 JADE Semantics Framework 22512.1 FIPA-SL language 22612.2 Interpretation engine 23012.3 Basic semantic agent 23112.4 Specializing the interpretation activity 23412.5 Customizing belief handling 23712.6 Handling Actions 24012.7 Synthesizing standard and advanced use of the JSA 24512.8 Conclusions 24513 A Selection of Other Relevant Tools 24713.1 The Bean Generator 24713.2 Jademx 25013.3 The Java Sniffer 25113.4 JADEX – engineering goal-oriented agents 254Appendix A Command Line Options 259A.1 Syntax 259A.2 Options to launch containers and main containers 260A.3 General Options 261A.4 Options of the JADE kernel-level services 262A.5 Options related to MTPs 265A.6 Options to configure the yellow page DF service 267A.7 Options specific to the JADE-LEAP platform 268A.8 Extending the command line with user-defined options 269Appendix B List of Symbols and Acronyms 271Bibliography 275References 275FIPA Specifications 278Index 281