	overview \| fipa-os

Features

Toolkit Overview

FIPA-OS is a component-orientated toolkit for constructing FIPA compliant Agents using mandatory components (i.e. components required by ALL FIPA-OS Agents to execute), components with switchable implementations, and optional components (i.e. components that a FIPA-OS Agent can optionally use). The figure below highlights the available components and their relationship with each other (NOTE: The Planner Scheduler is not currently available).

The Database Factory, Parser Factory and CCL components are optional and do not have an explicit relationship with the other components within the tool-kit. The Planner Scheduler generally has the ability to interact with all components of an Agent, although not necessarily vice versa.

Agent Shell

The FIPAOSAgent class provides a shell for Agent implementation to use by simply extending this class.

Task Manager

The Task Manager provides the ability to split the functionality of an Agent into smaller, disjoint units of works known as Tasks. The aim is that Task's are self-contained pieces of code that carry out some task and (optionally) return a result, have the ability to send and receive messages, and have little or preferably no dependence on the Agent they are executed within.

Conversation Manager

The Conversation Manager provides the ability to track conversation state at the performative level, as well as mechanisms for grouping messages of the same conversation together. If a conversation is specified as following a particular protocol (FIPA or user-defined), the Conversation Manager will ensure that the protocol is being followed by both participants involved in the conversation

MTS (Message Transport Service)

The MTS provides the ability to send and receive messages to and from an Agent implementation. A variety of MTPs (Message Transport Protocols) are provided with FIPA-OS to enable the MTS to communicate using various protocols.

Supported Internal MTPs

RMI
SSL-RMI

Supported External MTPs (from ACC )

corbaname
http

JESS Agent Shell

This extension to the standard Agent Shell provides support for writing FIPA-OS Agent which can take advantage of the JESS system.

FIPAOS Factory

A factory for factories. FIPAOS makes extensive use of factories, FIPAOSFactory is a way of mapping an particular instance of a factory implementation with an abstract factory interface. It is then possible to specify which particular implementation of factory is to be used for any particular instance of FIPAOS.

Database Factory

The Database Factory provides a simple mechanism for interacting with a number of database implementations in an object-oriented manner using a consistent interface.

Abstract Databinding Implementation

This component is designed to enable the content of a message to be expressed in a form containing just its semantic information, without concerning agent developers with the actual "on-the-wire" encoding sytnax. It uses a factory pattern( DataappingFactory) for datamapping to and from XML( Enhydra & Zeus ), Java Properties or Abstract Script Binding( Windows & Unix )

Supported FIPA Specifications

Agent Communication