Integrating mobile agents into off-the-shelf web servers: the M&M approach

The mobile agent paradigm provides a new approach for developing distributed systems. During the last two years, we have been working on a project that tries to overcome some of the limitations found in terms of programmability and usability of the mobile agent paradigm in real applications. In the M&M framework there are no agent platforms. Instead applications become agent-enabled by using simple JavaBeans components. In our approach the agents arrive and departure directly from the applications, interacting with them from the inside. In this paper we discuss our experiences on integrating these components into off-the-shelf web servers, enabling them to receive and send agents. Our approach involves wrapping the components inside a Java servlet that can be included in any web server supporting the Servlet Specification. This servlet enables the servers to receive and send agents that can query local information, and also enables the agents to behave as servlets themselves. This approach departs from the current available systems because it enables any existing web server that supports the servlet specification to send and receive agents in a straightforward way