Using multiple mobile agents for distributed transactions

Abstract

Agent systems are well suited for applications requiring great flexibility. We propose a mechanism that uses multiple mobile agents to implement distributed transactions in a wide area network. Of special interest are applications in which resources change over time. By using multiple, mobile and autonomous agents in our model we are able to monitor resources in a distributed system and to react to changes in a very flexible manner. Each agent is responsible for a single resource and corresponds with the Object Transaction Service (OTS) for the coordination of the global transaction. For the management and the control of the agents we propose X-TRA, our extensible trusted agent system which offers a trust service for agent identification and control with exactly once semantics for agent migration, controlled agent termination, grouping of agents, and a bank service.