XML Agents Technology for Building Collaborative Applications

This paper describes an XML based agents technology for building web services based collaborative applications. The technology consists of XML Agents (XAs), XML Agent Hosts, and XML based Agent Communication Language (XACL). The XML based XAs and XACL messages are neutral to particular agent systems and programming languages. The XML Agent Hosts are implemented using Web Services technology. The hosts provide services to XML agents and agent communications that are represented as Web service requests, and provide runtime environments for performing visiting agents’ behaviors that are implemented in multiple programming languages. Collaborative applications can be built using two types of agent collaborations, agent communications through XACL and agent visiting. XAs reside in different hosts can collaborate each other be exchanging XACL messages. Also XAs can "meet" face to face in a host supported by XAs’ mobility. Mobile XAs support more dynamic collaborations by their dynamic behaviors with different collaboration partners in different hosts.