Exception diagnosis for agent-oriented services

Abstract

Agent oriented architectures and service oriented architectures (SOA) have many features in common such as loose coupling and provision and consumption of services. Software agent systems have been used in many commercial applications due to their attractive attributes such as autonomy, flexibility and; a rich and complex set of interaction protocols. Agents in such systems provide and consume services on behalf of their owners. These systems are prone to various kinds of runtime exceptions due to the dynamic nature of open environments and the different programming models involved in the provision of a particular service. Diagnosis of underlying causes of these exceptions is critical for the successful and reliable operation of agent oriented services. This paper presents and discusses a sentinel agent based approach for diagnosing the underlying causes of runtime exception for agent-oriented services.