Table of Contents
The ARE forms the core. The core consists of a Habitat, which contains places, which contains agents.
Agents are classes that implement AgentEventListener.
Agents use messages to communicate with each other.
There are two ways an agent can communicate with the Habitat. Either through a select set of methods or through communication with so-called System Agents.
The Habitat provides several actions for agents, such as mobility and persistency.
The habitat provides a relatively secure environment where agents can be limited in their access to the runtime environment or the host operating system.
The following features are highlighted and will be explained in detail in this document.
Messages, FIPA, asynchronous communication
Mobility
Database connectivity, persistence
JNDI
System Agents, Service Agents
Security, Public key cryptography, certificates
JXTA peer to peer technology
Messenger plugins