A JMS Message Transport Protocol for the JADE platform

A prerequisite of joining an enterprise system is the ability to cope with the rigorous demands experienced within such systems. One of the most fundamental of these demands is the requirement for enterprise-level systems to have guaranteed reliable messaging between the participants of the system. Our research involves integrating an agent platform with an enterprise messaging service. This first step in combining agent technology with a mainstream messaging service is vital to the participation of agent systems within the digital enterprise. This paper introduces a new Message Transport Protocol (MTP) for the Java Agent Development (JADE) platform. The new protocol uses the Java Messaging Service (JMS) to deliver inter-platform communication between agent platforms. The paper provides a brief overview of the design of this new MTP, evaluates its performance, and examines the benefits of the MTP in comparison to the other available MTPs; it then concludes and highlights plans for the development of the MTP.