Abstract
The Grid is a large-scale computer system, capable of coordinating resources that are not subject to centralised control, while using standard, open, general-purpose protocols and interfaces, and delivering non-trivial qualities of service. In this chapter, we argue that Grid applications very strongly suggest the use of agent-based computing, and we review key uses of agent technologies in Grids: user agents, able to customise and personalise data, agent communication languages offering a generic and portable communication medium, and negotiation allowing multiple distributed entities to reach service-level agreements. In the second part of the chapter, we focus on Grid service discovery, which we have identified as a prime candidate for the use of agent technologies: we show that Grid services need to be located via personalised, semantic-rich discovery processes, which must rely on arbitrary metadata about services that originates from both service providers and service users. We present UDDI-MT, an extension to the standard UDDI service directory approach that supports the storage of such metadata via a tunnelling technique that ties the metadata store to the original UDDI directory. The outcome is a flexible service registry that is compatible with existing standards and also provides metadata-enhanced service discovery.
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© 2004 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.
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Moreau, L., Luck, M., Miles, S., Papay, J., Decker, K., Payne, T. (2004). Agents and the Grid. In: Bergenti, F., Gleizes, MP., Zambonelli, F. (eds) Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems. Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations, vol 11. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8058-1_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8058-1_25
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-8057-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8058-6
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