Distributed event dissemination for ubiquitous agents

ABSTRACT: Software agent technology is based on event-driven entities that use asynchronous messaging and high-level languages to communicate. Agents may subscribe information from other agents, update their internal models based on received messages and notifications, and publish notifications to listening agents. Currently, most agent architectures do not employ content-based dissemination of messages or notifications, and the agents need to take care of subscription management. In this paper, we examine the benefits of providing a distributed event service for agents that supports mobile components and filtering. We consider using distributed event filtering in enhancing agent functionality and simplifying the agent application development by delegating subscription management to the middleware system.