A Multi-Agent Distributed Scripting System for COTS-Based Distributed Software Integration

This paper presents an approach to distributed commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) based software integration by using the concepts of a multi-agent system and the distributed scripting mechanism. COTS software products are increasingly used to be software components in large-scale systems. Most organisations try to gain the promises of rapidly development and lower cost from reusing COTS components. Nevertheless, COTS-based software system development needs an efficient and useful integration approach. We developed a multi-agent system as an execution platform for distributed COTS software products. Instead of an RPC-like invocation approach, we adopt mobile agents to interoperate COTS software. We also developed a scripting mechanism for helping the software integrator to write a gluer. By using our scripting language constructs and the associated rules, a software integrator can easily write various scripts in various styles. To illustrate this multi-agent system, a distributed CPU-utilisation data collection system, is experimented in our study. Finally, we also successfully developed a graphical user interface tool that would be beneficial and useful for software integrator to edit, debug and display script programs and results.

[1]  Sihem Ben Sassi,et al.  Towards a COTS-based development environment , 2006, Fifth International Conference on Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS)-Based Software Systems (ICCBSS'05).

[2]  Leigh A. Davis,et al.  Identifying Evolvability for Integration , 2002, ICCBSS.

[3]  Zhi Wang,et al.  Implementing Grid Computing over Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks based on Mobile Agent , 2006, 2006 Fifth International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing Workshops.

[4]  Brent B Welch,et al.  Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk , 1999 .

[5]  Alexander Egyed,et al.  Unfriendly COTS integration - instrumentation and interfaces for improved plugability , 2001, Proceedings 16th Annual International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2001).

[6]  Thomas G. Baker.  Lessons Learned Integrating COTS into Systems , 2002, ICCBSS.

[7]  Mohammed Ibrahim.  Distributed network management with secured mobile agent support , 2006, 2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering.

[8]  Thomi Pilioura,et al.  Distributed technologies CORBA, Enterprise JavaBeans, Web services: a comparative presentation , 2006, 14th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, and Network-Based Processing (PDP'06).

[9]  Danny B. Lange,et al.  Agent design patterns: elements of agent application design , 1998, AGENTS '98.

[10]  Paolo Bellavista,et al.  Mobile Agent Middleware for Mobile Computing , 2001, Computer.

[11]  Jim-Min Lin,et al.  A style for integrating MS‐Windows software applications to client–server systems using Java technology , 2007, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[12]  Fu Yan,et al.  GSCRIPT: a script language that supports both COM and CORBA , 2000, Proceedings Fourth International Conference/Exhibition on High Performance Computing in the Asia-Pacific Region.

[13]  Evaggelia Pitoura,et al.  Mobile Agents for World Wide Web Distributed Database Access , 2000, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[14]  Andreas Rausch,et al.  Adaptation strategies in componentware , 2000, Proceedings 2000 Australian Software Engineering Conference.

[15]  Michael Eonsuk Shin,et al.  Self-Management of COTS Component-Based Systems Using Wrappers , 2006, 30th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC'06).

[16]  Sabrina De Capitani di Vimercati,et al.  Mobile Agent Technology for Remote Measurements , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[17]  Thomas Pfarr,et al.  The Integration of COTS/GOTS within NASA's HST Command and Control System , 2002, ICCBSS.

[18]  John K. Ousterhout,et al.  Scripting: Higher-Level Programming for the 21st Century , 1998, Computer.

[19]  Dean Jin,et al.  A service-sharing methodology for integrating COTS-based software systems , 2006, Fifth International Conference on Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS)-Based Software Systems (ICCBSS'05).

[20]  Jim-Min Lin,et al.  MADSS: a multi-agent based distributed scripting system , 2002, Proceedings 26th Annual International Computer Software and Applications.