Project Overview
An agent in TACOMA is a piece of code that can be installed
and executed on a remote computer. Such an agent may explicitly
migrate to other hosts in the network during execution.
The TACOMA project focuses on operating system support for agents and
how agents can be used to solve problems traditionally addressed by
other distributed computing paradigms, e.g. the client/server
model. We have implemented a series of prototype systems to support
agents:
- TACOMA Version 1.0.1 is based on UNIX and Tcl-TCP. Agents can be
written in Tcl/TK. This system provides the core TACOMA abstractions,
but lacks vital security features.
- TACOMA Version 1.1 is based on UNIX and TCP. Agents can be
written in Tcl/TK or in C, and support for other languages is in
progress. This version also provides some vital security mechanisms.
- TACOMA Version 1.2 is based on UNIX and TCP. The system supports
agents written in a variety of programming languages (C, Tcl/Tk, Perl,
Python, and Scheme). TACOMA 1.2 is implemented in C.
We are currently focusing on fault-tolerance, security, applicability
and management issues. The TACOMA platform has also been ported to
new operating system architectures, in particular Windows NT, Windows
CE and the PalmOS. Several TACOMA applications are under
construction. One example is a wide-area network weather monitoring
system accessible over the internet. This distributed application is
StormCast.
We are also investigating whether agents can be useful in extensible
file system architectures.
The TACOMA project is a collaboration between the Department of
Computer Science, University of Tromsø, Norway, the Department
of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA and the
Department of Computer Science, University of California, San Diego,
USA.
|