Inter-Agent Communication in Cooperative Information Agent-Based Systems

This paper describes several different approaches for information agents to communicate and cooperate with each other in agent-based systems. The paper describes different communication patterns for interagent cooperation. In particular, three patterns of inter-agent communication are described in more detail, brokered communication, subscription/notification communication, and negotiated communication. In each case, the pattern is described and examples of its use are given. The cooperative interagent interactions are described in the Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation. Agent-based systems can be designed using these different patterns of interagent communication. Examples are given from electronic commerce, real-time monitoring, and travel reservation systems.

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