Write Once, Move Anywhere: Toward Dynamic Interoperability of Mobile Agent Systems

Dartmouth Technical Report TR2001-411

	Arne Grimstrup
	Robert S. Gray
	David Kotz
	Thomas Cowin
	Greg Hill
	Niranjan Suri
	Daria Chacon
	Martin Hofmann

Date: July 2001

URL (compressed postscript): <http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2001-411.ps.Z> (204KB)

URL (PDF): <http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2001-411.pdf> (220KB)

Abstract:
 Mobile agents are an increasingly popular paradigm,
 and in recent years there has been a proliferation
 of mobile-agent systems. These systems are, however,
 largely incompatible with each other. In particular,
 agents cannot migrate to a host that runs a
 different mobile-agent system. Prior approaches to
 interoperability have tried to force agents to use a
 common API, and so far none have succeeded. Our
 goal, summarized in the catch phrase ``Write
 Once, Move Anywhere,'' led to our efforts to develop
 mechanisms that support dynamic runtime
 interoperability of mobile-agent systems. This paper
 describes the Grid Mobile-Agent System,
 which allows agents to migrate to different
 mobile-agent systems.

Note:
 Revised July 25, 2001.