Research on Inheritance of Software Agent
Fan Xiaocon · 1999
Being a kind of restricted intelligent objects, agent is a natural way to research the inheritance fea-ture of software agent and integrate inheritance mechanisms into AOP (agent-oriented programming). Based onBDI model of agents, the semantics of inheritance and cloning behavior of agents are addressed in this paper.The semantics of inheritance are discussed from two aspects: single inheritance and multiple inheritance. Forcloning behavior, the authors identify and formally classify the dynamic cloning mechanisms of agent instancesinto four types: function split, logic split, preference split and retrogress split. The principle of each cloningmechanism is presented and the examples are provided based on the electrical commerce systems.