Abstractions and Infrastructures for the Design and Development of Mobile Agent Organizations

Internet applications can take advantage of a paradigm based on autonomous and mobile agents. However, suitable abstractions and infrastructures are required for the effective engineering of such applications. In this paper, we argue that a conceptual framework for context-dependent coordination, supported by an infrastructure based on programmable media, can promote a modular and easy to manage approach to the design and development of mobile agent applications in terms of computational organizations. The MARS coordination infrastructure is presented as an implementation of a coordination infrastructure promoting context-dependent coordination. A case study in the area of workflow management is introduced to clarify the concepts presented.