![](bg4.png)
their scope at registration, this scope can be
described as "global" or can name a portal. Global
agents are visible to all other agents (their details are
included in the routing-tables of all portals). This
behaviour can be achieved with minor modifications
to the agent registration system.
When the scope of an agent is declared with the
name of a portal, the agent is only visible to other
agents in the same tree/sub-MAS, the details of the
non-global agent are included only in the routing-
tables of portals in the same sub-MAS so only other
agents in this sub-MAS may send messages to the
non-global agent.
Fourth: despite the need for run-time analysis of
MAS, problems exist with trying to collect the
necessary run-time information. A possible solution
is to encourage/insist that programmers add code to
their agents to capture their run-time status at
specified points in execution and relay it to some
central monitoring system. However developers are
unlikely to comply and would need to operate
according to a set of standards which would impose
additional burdens on development.
A better solution may be obtained by using meta-
agents. Information about MAS structure can be
obtained by examining the details of agent
registration and messages exchanged between
application agents provide details/traces of system
activity. Since portals route various meta-data,
including that describing registration and user-agent
messaging, portals can be readily modified to
forward that meta-data to a monitoring system
without disrupting any other system activity.
In practice we implement the monitoring system
as its own MAS and modify the message receiver of
portals so the monitor is copied in to relevant
information.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This paper has highlighted a limitation with the
agent platforms and middleware which are currently
available – they are not designed to allow system
developers to modify their behaviour so cannot be
tailored to suit the needs of developers.
Influenced by related work on meta-agents and
actors we have specified a small set of meta-agents,
light-weight components which lend themselves to
modification and may readily be configured into
different patterns.
We have used patterns of interacting meta-agents
to form distributed subsystems which function as
MAS platforms and middleware. Different
configurations of these meta-agent patterns can be
made to exhibit different properties and influence
the characteristics of the resulting platforms they
produce thereby providing adaptable frameworks for
a variety of MAS applications.
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