Communication infrastructure of scheduling agents

Scheduling involves the allocation of limited resources to tasks over time. Due to the high complexity of scheduling problems, most scheduling algorithms and procedures are only suitable for specific cases and most scheduling systems are very application-oriented. Until now, no single scheduling system has been able to handle all types of scheduling problems. With the development of the client/server architecture and Internet technology, distributed problem solving by a group of systems becomes feasible where systems can exchange information, share resources and cooperate to solve large and complicated problems. Moreover, intensive research into intelligent software agents and agent technology has offered tools for solving problems and coordination between systems. These tools allow systems to be represented as agents and coordinate their activities through message passing. However, most of the concepts and approaches have been applied to general applications and very little research has been studied the distributed approach to scheduling systems development. In this research, the framework of agent-based distributed scheduling is presented. The research is divided into three parts: Internet scheduling systems; the establishment of communication infrastructure; and the distributed problem solving policy