Hi Glen,

Well, what I think is nice about JADE is that they have done a LOT of  
the inter-agent management for you, and it's actually pretty easy to  
set up and get going. It's been around now for over 4 years (maybe  
even longer), it's open source, and the developers have recently come  
out with a book (http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Multi-Agent-Systems- 
Wiley-Technology/dp/0470057475/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1? 
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197055589&sr=8-1), although I think the  
documentation is decent enough.

Good luck!
steve


On Dec 7, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:

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> Stephen Upton on 12/07/2007 08:20 AM:
>> Another idea is to use JADE, or some other similar MAS (multi-agent
>> system). There is no simulation infrastructure since it was built as
>> middleware for constructing MAS's. However, the basics are there for
>> having agents on different machines, migration of agents,  
>> communication
>> between agents, etc.. It would be interesting if the ABM community  
>> got
>> together with the MAS community to share ideas, if they haven't  
>> done so
>> already. I haven't seen much. These agents are typically more
>> heavyweight than agents used in ABM/IBM's, e.g., having an expert  
>> system
>> as a decision making component, but if you're headed that route, it
>> might be an avenue to look into.
>
> I definitely will.  It's an interesting idea.  I tend to slice up my
> simulations so that a big agent (composed of smaller agents) manages
> it's sub-agents and bottlenecks communication between sibling big
> agents.  In the rare situation that a sub-agent needs to talk to  
> another
> sub-agent managed by a different big agent, I sometimes violate  
> that and
> build special dongles specifically for those sub-agents in  
> interfaces of
> the big agent.
>
> So, it would be reasonable to use JADE's distribution for these big
> agents and have each of them manage a MASON SimState, which contained
> the sub-agents.
>
> My only question now is whether gymnastics like this are more or less
> effort (initial, maintenance, and training) than just hand-rolling my
> own inter-agent management (e.g. RMI).  My first inclination is to  
> do it
> myself, unfortunately.
>
> Thanks!
> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're
> talking about. -- John Von Neumann
>
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