A mobile‐agent platform and a game application specifications using M‐UML

Pages32-42
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/02640470410520096
Published date01 February 2004
Date01 February 2004
AuthorKassem Saleh,Christo El Morr,Aref Mourtada,Yahya Morad
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Library & information science
A mobile-agent platform
and a game application
specifications using
M-UML
Kassem Saleh
Christo El Morr
Aref Mourtada and
Yahya Morad
1 Introduction
A mobile agent is a software component that is
able to move across computer systems at which
it can execute the code it carries (Cockayne and
Zyda, 1988). Typical applications of mobile
agents include electronic commerce (Kiniry and
Zimmerman, 1997; Chavez and Maes, 1996),
network management, and collaborative
processing applications among others.
Furthermore, a family of computer games can
be suitably carried out using a combination of
mobile and stationary agents, reducing network
traffic by allowing the least number of
interactions across platforms.
Mobile agents are created by a distributed
application at a computer site and launched to
another site using an underlying mobile-agent
platform (MAP). An instance of the platform
running at the remote site can receive the
mobile agent and dispatch it to the distributed
application running at that site. There are
already some existing platforms like Aglets,
Concordia, and Odyssey (Lange and Oshima,
1998). However, none of these platforms takes
care of two important aspects needed in mobile
applications, that is, security and
fault-tolerance, in addition, these platforms are
not interoperable.
In this work, we report on our experience in:
first, developing a prototype platform for
mobile agents, and second, developing a game
application that uses the developed platform.
Our platform considers the guidelines described
by the Foundation for Intelligent Physical
Agents (FIPA) that allows the interoperability
between agents running on different agent
platforms[1]. Our platform specifications
provide the application developer with an
application programming interface (API) that
allows the launching of mobile agents with two
optional features, security and fault-tolerance.
Using our API, new games can then be
efficiently developed and deployed on the
Internet.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the functionality of the
The authors
Kassem Saleh is a Professor in the Department of Computer
Science, Christo El Morr is an Assistant Professor in the
Management Information Systems Department,
Aref Mourtada and Yahya Morad are Students, both in
the Computer Science Department; all are at the American
University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Keywords
Software engineering, Computer communications software
Abstract
This paper provides the specification of a platform for the
management of mobile agents, and describes, using Mobile
Unified Modeling Language (M-UML), a mobile game
application that uses the specified mobile platform. The
specified platform considers the architectural guidelines
described by the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents
that allows the interoperability between agents running on
different agent platforms. Our platform specifications provide
the application developer with an application programming
interface (API) that allows the launching of mobile agents
with two optionalfeatures, security and fault-tolerance. Using
the platform's APIs,new mobile games can then be efficiently
developed and deployed on the Internet.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
The authors would like to acknowledge support of
this work by a research grant from Research
Administration at the American University of
Sharjah.
32
The Electronic Library
Volume 22 .Number 1 .2004 .pp. 32-42
#Emerald Group Publishing Limited .ISSN 0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640470410520096

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