ATSpace: a middle agent to support application oriented matchmaking and brokering services

An important problem for agents in open multiagent systems is how to find agents that match certain criteria. A number of middle agent services - such as matchmaking and brokering services - have been proposed to address this problem. However, the search capabilities of such services are relatively limited since the match criteria they use are relatively inflexible. We propose ATSpace, a model to support application-oriented matchmaking and brokering services. Application agents in ATSpace deliver their own search algorithms to a public tuple space which holds agent property data; the tuple space executes the search algorithms on this data. We show how the ATSpace model increases the dynamicity and flexibility of a middle agent service. Unfortunately, the model also introduces security threats: the data and access control restrictions in ATSpace may be compromised, and system availability may be affected. We describe some mechanisms to address these security threats.