DIET Agents

This release features relatively small changes, but ones that developers should find useful. The address parsing functionality in the core layer is now available through the AddressParser interface. In the ARC layer, the newly added MirrorFactory interface makes it much easier for agents to initiate remote communication. The MirrorChat and Running sample applications have both been updated to demonstrate this new functionality.

The Application Reusable Components have been improved. Jobs have been updated to obey a more strict startup and shutdown contract, and the SubScheduler and EventManagerContainer classes have been added to facilitate this. The functionality of the SerialJobManager has been extended, as it now supports various modes. This is demonstrated in the new "job" sample application, which also illustrates how to use most of the newly added jobs. In the core layer, the visualisation models have been fully separated from their implementation. There are many other changes.

Support has been added for agent persistence. In
particular, changes in the core layer enable
serialization of agents while they are running.
Together with the newly added ability to pause
agents by locking them, this provides basic agent
persistence. The ARC layer functionality has been
enhanced to facilitate external control of groups
of agents. This can, for instance, be used in
order to save agents to file, as demonstrated by
the new "persistent sorting" demo application.
Furthermore, the platform now supports SSL
sockets. Several minor bugs were fixed, mostly
related to remote communication.

Support for remote communication (between agents on different machines) has been massively improved. There is now a robust and efficient implementation of Mirror agents which offers transparant remote communication. Furthermore, message channels are provided as another way of remote communication. There are new sample applications to demonstrate both remote communication schemes. In the core layer, the use of sockets has been generalised, and socket I/O errors can now be monitored. Many other improvements have been made as well, and several minor bugs have been fixed.

This is the first Java 1.1 compatible version. It enables you to run the platform in a wider range of environments, including hand-held devices and/or Web browsers without recent Java plug-ins.