Enterprise service facilitation within agent environments

A prerequisite of participating in an enterprise system is the ability to cope with the rigorous demands experienced within the system. In order to cope with these demands, a number of infrastructure support services are available to assist developers in their creation. A key obstacle to the widespread deployment of agent technology is the relative immaturity of agent technology with regard to its infrastructure. This paper presents a solution to the problem by offering enterprise-level infrastructure services to agent platforms in an agent friendly manner. The proposed solution uses Service-Agent Gateways (SAG) to offer these services within an agent environment. This paper describes the SAG design pattern and presents an implementation of the pattern that offers the functionality of Enterprise Message Services (EMS) to an agent environment. The Java Message Service (JMS)-Agent Gateway enhances the acceptability of agent platforms within business environments, moving them a step closer to full-scale participation in the digital enterprise.