Software Engineering Concerns for Mobile Agent Systems
Jonathan Emdin Cook · 2007
INTRODUCTION It seems certain that building software systems composed of mobile agents introduces interesting new concerns for software engineering research, but what exactly ought those concerns be? One approach to determining them is to look at the assumptions behind the interest in mobile agent systems, and then deduce some requirements for how these systems will have to be built. These requirements elucidate novel areas of research that will need to be undertaken in order to make the goal of widespread mobile agents a reality. As a position paper looking at broad areas, specific citations are not provided. Some areas of research pointed out are currently being well-covered. Other areas provide open opportunities. Relevant work in many of these areas, along with foundational mobile agent research, can be found in, e.g., [2, 3]. Section 2 presents assumptions behind mobile agent systems and the software engineering research issues that each assumption prese