Acquisition of hands-on experience with various agent technologies
and the development of experimental prototypes
This work unit is aimed at getting hands-on experience with
application of various available agent architecture approaches by means
of experiments and the development of experimental prototypes. Apart from
getting enough hands-on experience to be able to implement both the ontology-based
advisory system and the trade agent system, experiments are also necessary
to test these solutions thouroughly on their applicability for secure trade
support. Currently, most of the available techniques are in their preliminary
state of development. To be applied for a concept as trade agents, it is
necessary to be able to judge different agent technologies with respect
to security issues.
Acquisition of hands-on experience is done by carrying out
experiments in the context of the trade agent project and by involving
members of the project team in other, currently running projects on application
of agent technology at the various partners. Especially, experimental prototypes
are built in cooperation with work unit 6: then
work
unit 4 takes care of the agent architecture and agent technology
implementation, and work unit 6
takes care of the design and implementation of the learning c.q. strategic
behaviour of an agent.
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Currently available deliverables
[0D4.1] System
Architecture (restricted access only)
Technical report presenting the NIAM data model for both
business cases and demonstrators, The data model identifies a.o. shops,
products, stereotypes, profiles, and ontologies for communication, etc.
(2000 Q2)
[0D4.2] Mockup
KPN (restricted access only)
Technical report describing the first mockup with screenshots
of html pages, showing the functionality for the main process in the KPN
shopping mall. (2000 Q2).
[0D4.3] Mockup
ING(restricted access only)
Technical report describing the first mockup with screenshots
of html pages, showing the functionality for the main process in the ING
Information broker business case. (2000 Q2)
[0D4.4] Aglet
security report (restricted access only)
Technical report on literature search on security aspects
of Aglets. Aglets is a specific development environment from IBM for mobile
and autonomous agents with a proprietary security model. This model corresponds
to many common security aspects. It also has several restrictions and some
security aspects are not sufficiently covered. (2000 Q2)
[0D4.5] Stand-alone
Java implementation (restricted access only)
Technical report describes the suggested architecture
for both business cases in a the stand-alone java implementation. This
report extends the architecture of 0D4.1 to 4 models: data, communication,
agent, and services models. (2000 Q3)
[0D4.6] Experiments
with a client-server architecture (restricted
access only)
Technical report describing a standard for a client-server
architecture based on servlets, the servers Tomcat and Apache. This is
a technical working document describing the technology, required installations,
experiments for implementation aspects for e-commerce applications, experiences
with installation and experiments. (2000 Q3)
[0D4.7] Aglets
Evaluation Report (restricted access only)
Technical report describing Aglets technology and development
environment for autonomous and mobile agents from IBM. This is a technical
working document describing the technology, architecture, API, installation
and experiments for application in the business cases. (2000 Q3)
[0D4.8] Security
Aspects of the TNO-TPD Trade Agents Model (restricted
access only)
Technical report on the analysis of the system architecture
of 0D4.1 on several security aspects that are specific to e-commerce and
agents; agent security, privacy protection, payment services. This report
also indicates where privacy enhancing technologies are necessary. (2000
Q3)
[0D4.9] Demonstrator
KPN (restricted access only)
Technical report describing the demonstrator for KPN.
This demonstrator runs in an internet browser, is developed in JavaScript
and Java applets. It demonstrates the hypotheses on personalisation of
communication and information to the customer in the electronic shopping
mall. (2000 Q4)
[0D4.10] Demonstrator
ING (restricted access only)
Technical report describing the demonstrator for ING.
This demonstrator runs inan internet browser and uses a client-server architecture
reported in the third quarter. It demonstrates how a client can express
his interest for financial messages, how these are classified and how the
price for the messages is changed over time. (2000 Q4)
[0D4.11] Possible
applications of JINI in Agent Technology (restricted
access only)
Technical report describing the experiments on application
of JINI technology from SUN. It presents a background on JINI, how to use
the technology in an example of a JINI based service environment, and discusses
alternative uses for agent-based systems with examples. (2000 Q4)
[0D4.12] JINI
Security (restricted access only)
Technical report describing the evaluation of security
aspects of JINI technology and presents some recommendations. (2000 Q4)
[1D4.1] XML Communication(restricted
access only)
Technical report on the application of XML for communication
between clients and servers, and between agents. XML provides a standard
structure for defining messages in predefined ontologies. The report will
also describe code modules to standardize communication in the prototypes
and the conceptual framework of work unit 1. Standards
for communication protocols and message contents will be considered later
in this project. (2001 Q1)
[1D4.2] The usage
of secure XML within agent technologies (restricted
access only)
This document is a description of the security issues
addressed by the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA). It
also contains a proposal how extensible Mark-up Language-Security (XML-S)
could be integrated within the FIPA standards and it gives an inventory
of leads for the use of XML-S within the use case of ING in the ASTA projects.
(2001 Q2)
[1D4.3] Business
Case Demonstrator (restricted access only)
Technical report on further development of the demonstrators
of 2000 for the business cases. One or both demonstrators will be extended
with functionality and services to customers, shops, and mall, the results
from the first half year on XML communication and the internal agent architecture
will be integrated. (2001 Q3)
[1D4.4] Agent
Modelling and Development Environment (restricted
access only)
The evaluation of, and experimentation with, an (commercially)
available agent modelling and development environment. Experiments will
be set up to evaluate it with respect to the trade agent architecture,
prototypes and conceptual framework of WU5. (2001 Q3)
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