Where are all the agents? on the gap between theory and practice of agent-based referral networks an inter-agent communication perspective

Abstract

The intrinsic openness and dynamism of the Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) vision makes it crucial to locate useful services and recognize them as trustworthy. To address this challenge, referral networks have recently been proposed as a decentralized approach based on software agents technology. Although in theory this idea might look promising for enabling the SOC vision, real-world referral systems are still missing. In this paper we study this gap between theory and practice from the point of view of agent communication, since it represents a key feature of agent-based distributed systems. To do this, we firstly highlight the main agent communication requirements needed to cope with real-life agent-based referral networks. Secondly, we discuss why the standard language for agent communication (FIPA ACL) is not suitable for supporting these requirements. Finally, we briefly illustrate how they can be easily satisfied by an advanced agent communication language, namely FT-ACL. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.