Abstract for Dejan S. Milojicic Name: Dejan S. Milojicic Organization: OpenGroup E-mail: dejan@opengroup.org Go to the bio

The Mobile Objects and Agents (MOA) project at the OpenGroup deals with the mobile agents system with three main goals: transparent migration while maintaining open communication channels and transparently locating agents; maintaining strict control of agent resources (open channels, number of hops, agent life time, etc.); compliance with Java Beans component model - many MOA components can be configured and instantiated at the run time.

The MOA agent system has similar (but different) semantics as Telescript agents: it supports agents and places that agents visit; places can be hierarchical, they represent containers for the resources and security, and they are basis for interagent communication.

The MOA system is being implemented in Java and it is scheduled for delivery by the end of the 1997.

As a part of the MOA project we developed a demo called "Rent-A-Soft" that we presented at the Uniforum. It demonstrates the use of mobile agents for renting and distributing software over the network. Rent-A-Soft allows software companies better to leverage market by reaching customers incapable of buying, but willing to rent certain software packages. This is applicable for games which tend to have increased price. Contribution of mobility is for encapsulating software packages and associating code for rental expiration, inventory, availability, statistics, upgrades, etc. A chain of agents can be encapsulating rented application and representing software producer, main renting company, its departments, copmany that rents and its own departments, all of them being involved in the rental process.

For more details on MOA and various publications see: http://www.opengroup.org/RI/java/moa/