Java Agent DEvelopment framework

JADE is a framework in java that allows the realisation of agents and multi-agent systems. It complies with the FIPA specifications. The agent platform can be distributed within a network and thus does not need to reside within one machine/OS.

JADE Adminstration Tutorial

Introducing the notions of:

• Agent
• Container
• Platform
• Main Container
• AMS and DF

Follow the figure below. A JADE application will have Agent elements, each with a unique name(A1,A2,..). Agents act and interact by exchanging messages.

Agents live on top of a Platform, which allows for services such as message delivery. A platform contains one or more Containers. Each container can contain 0 or more agents. A container can be thought of as a JVM.

A special container called Main Container always exists in the platform, it’s like other containers except:

1. It’s the first container to start on a platform.
2. It comes with special agents called AMS and DF, which allows starting and killing other agents and DF allows Yellow Pages where agents can lookup other agent’s services.

Agent Communication

All agents can communicate with each other regardless of what container they are in. All communication is in the ACL format, which includes:

• sender information
• receiver information
• the communicative act which represents the intention of the message, eg - INFORM, REQUEST etc. FIPA has defined the communicative acts.
• the actual content of the message, this will contain the information that the receiver can process or act on.

Read up more and work with JADE.