GMGC Technology
General Magic's Agent Technology
General Magic invented mobile agents, a new paradigm for distributed computing that allows one to use the resources of a network automatically, as well as interactively. Mobile agent technology will be one of the primary ingredients of MagicTalk.
The agent paradigm
The mobile agent paradigm integrates a network of computers in a way that simplifies the development of network-based applications. To a developer the computers appear to form an electronic world of places occupied by agents. Each agent or place in the electronic world has the authority of an individual or organization in the physical world.
A mobile agent can travel from one place to another subject to the destination place's approval. The source and destination places can be in the same computer or in different computers. In either case, the agent initiates the trip by executing a go instruction which takes as an argument the name or address of the destination place. The next instruction in the agent's program is executed in the destination place, rather than in the source place. Thus, in a sense, the mobile agent paradigm reduces networking to a program instruction.
A mobile agent can interact programmatically with the places it visits and, if the other agents approve, with the other agents it encounters in those places. An agent typically travels to obtain a service offered by an agent in a distant place. An agent might travel from a place in a personal computer to a "theater ticketing place" in a network server. Upon arrival, the agent might purchase theater tickets by interacting with a resident "theater ticketing agent". Thus agents can be instruments of electronic commerce.
To learn more
To see a few applications for which mobile agents are well suited, witness some scenes from the electronic marketplace of the future.
To learn more about mobile agent technology, read the white paper or view the presentation written by Jim White, one of the inventors of mobile agents.
To find out about General Magic's implementation of mobile agents in 100% pure Java, take a look at Odyssey and then, if you like, download the Odyssey software.
For its agent work, General Magic was awarded a patent entitled Distributed Computation Based Upon the Movement, Execution and Interaction of Processes in a Network.
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