Table of Contents
This guide introduces more complex features of the ADK. The basics have already been covered in the Quickstart Guide. The Scenarios will take you through the steps involved in building agents and developing agent-based applications. Many examples are provided to illustrate how agents behave and how to control this behavior. The following features of the ADK are highlighted in this document:
Running an agent application:
Describes how to run an agent application using the examples which are included as part of the Tryllian ADK. (Chapter 2, ADK Examples). These examples demonstrate some advanced features of the ADK, like implementing a GUI interface for a mobile agent.
Rich messaging supports complex system communication including publish/subscribe and query/lookup:
Sending messages using Chatting Agents (Chapter 3, Scenario: Messaging example) includes information on Reactive tasks (receiving messages), requesting a list of current agents, scheduling tasks, setting agent parameters in habitat xml file, and creating agents.
Mobility using Chatting Agents:
Mobility and messaging over a network. Remote management, dynamic and action in a distributed environment eliminates need for installation or rebooting. Includes reading a file, moving between habitats, and getting habitat statistics using SNMP (Chapter 4, Scenario: Mobility and remote messaging example).
Security using Chatting Agents:
Security features at agent and habitat level based on advanced authentication, authorization, certification and permissions with Chatting Agents (Chapter 5, Scenario: Security example). This includes signing an agent with different certificates, preventing an agent from reading a file, and preventing an untrusted agent from entering your habitat.
Deploying security with Chatting Agents (Chapter 6, Scenario: Deploying Agents and Modifying DNA files) by modifying DNA files. This example shows how to add (3rd party) jars to your DNA file.
Interaction with External networks and other processes:
Remote communication (Chapter 7, Scenario: Remote Communication example) provides communication with a habitat by non-agent entities. The standalone messenger. Shows how to request a list of agents. In addition, it shows how to send and receive messages.
Use of persistence is needed for backup and recovery of agents. This allows a running application to continue after it has been restarted, such as in the case of network shutdown and prevents loss of agents (Chapter 8, Scenario: Persistence).
Demonstrates how JMS Messaging is used with JMS tasks that communicate with agents and two Enterprise Java Beans. (Chapter 9, Scenario: JMS messaging)
File Transfer:
Shows how to implement file transfer in a file update/distribution mechanism.(Chapter 10, Scenario: File transfer).
Web Services:
Agents can be an integral part of Web Services, playing the role of both Web Service client and as the Web Service itself (Section 11.2, “EXAMPLE: Running test agents using Web Services”).
Demonstrates how to discover Web Service method calls, create a Web Service call, and to call a Web Service using tasks provided by Tryllian (Section 11.3, “EXAMPLE: Running an agent that sends an XML document to a Web Service”).
Sample agent project:
Helps new ADK users by guiding them through developing their first agent application with step-by-step instructions (Chapter 13, Sample Project).
These scenarios assume that you have a command-line shell open, and that your working directory is the 'scenarios' directory of the ADK installation. All directories mentioned in the scenarios are relative to the scenarios directory except for the 'config' directory. This directory is found at the top level.
This manual uses the following typefaces described in following table to indicate special text.
| Typeface | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Italics | Newly introduced terms, concepts, file names and emphasis. |
| Monospace type | Code and console output, as well as code to be entered verbatim. It is also used to indicate filenames. |
| Keycaps | This typeface indicates a key on your keyboard. For example, "Press ESC to exit a menu." |
The Developer website is found on a special section of the Tryllian website (http://develop.tryllian.com) and is devoted to assisting ADK developers. It provides the latest news regarding current and future ADK releases. A download area shows the status on the most recent builds and allows developers to download the most recent versions or patches to earlier releases. In addition, current reference documents for the ADK and several tools packaged with it are provided. Finally, the Javadoc of the ADK can be found at this site.
To facilitate the readability of this document, the command lines are written for Windows users. If you have install the ADK on a Unix system or a Unix-like system such as GNU/Linux, you should then translate the command line by changing :
| Windows | Unix |
|---|---|
| ; | : |
| \ | / |
| file.bat [1] | ./file.sh |
| SET | EXPORT [2] |
| %VARIABLE% | ${VARIABLE} |
For example :
set ADK_PATH=%ADK_PATH%;%ADK_ROOT%\lib\jdbc\classes12.zip (Windows)
ADK_PATH=${ADK_PATH}:${ADK_ROOT}/lib/jdbc/classes12.zip (Unix)
habitat helloworld.xml (Windows)
./habitat.sh helloworld.xml (Unix)
For consistency in the document, the directory where you have installed the ADK will be named <ADK_ROOT>. You need then to replace <ADK_ROOT> with the name of your directory. For example :
replace cd <ADK_ROOT>\bin
with cd c:\Tryllian\adk-2.1\bin
You can report bugs through the ADK Users Mailing list or by sending an email to Tryllian at info@tryllian.com. You can also contact us via regular mail at
Tryllian Solutions B.V.
Hogehilweg 21
1101 CB Amsterdam-Zuidoost
The Netherlands
(T) +31 (0)20 850 80 00
(F) +31 (0)20 850 80 80
All reported bugs are submitted to Tryllian developers who will investigate these reported bugs in order to improve the quality of the ADK.