Extending agent messaging to enable OO information exchange

Abstract

It is canonical practice in agent-based systems to use a declarative format for the exchange of information. The increasing usage and facility of object-oriented tools and techniques, however, suggests there may be benefits in combining the use of object-oriented modelling approaches with agent-based messaging. In this paper we outline our efforts in connection with the New Zealand Distributed Information Systems project to use object-oriented knowledge representation in an agent-based architecture. Issues and tradeoffs are discussed, as well as the possible extensions to current agent-based message protocols that may be necessary in order to support object-oriented information exchange.