Multi-agent systems: overview of a new paradigm for distributed systems

Novel opportunities and challenges are emerging in the near future, such as Electronic commerce (e-commerce), due to the convergence of computers and telecommunication. Successful e-commerce requires rapid adaptation and excellent timing for service providers and users with guaranteed quality of service. Agent based technologies represent one of the most promising technological paradigm for distributed service system to meet these requirements. The aim of the current paper is to briefly review the agent systems basic architecture, with emphasize on agent communication languages. Two most popular agent communication languages, namely FIPA ACL and KQML have been briefly reviewed. The paper summarizes standardization activity of the agent system from the perspective of FIPA and OMG reference models. The relationship between FIPA and OMG has been given with a short discussion.