Amongst first-class protocols

Abstract. The ubiquity of our increasingly distributed and complex computing environments have necessitated the development of program-ming approaches and paradigms that can automatically manage the nu-merous tasks and processes involved. Hence, research into agency and multi-agent systems are of more and more interest as an automation so-lution. Coordination becomes a central issue in these environments. The most promising approach is the use of interaction protocols. Interaction protocols specify the interaction or social norms for the participating agents. However the orthodoxy see protocols as rigid specifications that are defined a priori. A recent development in this field of research is the specification of protocols that are treated as first-class computational en-tities. This paper explores the most prominent approaches and compares them.