Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2. Hierarchical structure of the agent system
Master Agent Control
Client
Instructor
Student
Registrar
Agent Control Client
Agent Control Client
Agent Control Client
Maintenance
Agent
Notification and
Recommendation
Student
Information
Content
Student
content back to the user. There is an interface agent associated directly with each information agent, and
the commands from the user are sent to the information agents to gather the requested data.
Information Agents: Information agents facilitate the mechanisms for data manipulation. They
receive command requests from the interface agents and execute the commands. The information agents
primarily handle requests relating to adding, updating, and deleting data based on the commands sent
by the user to the information agent's corresponding interface agent.
This project implements an agent based e-learning system. Its goal is to simulate the interactions
among several agents in an agent based system to facilitate the delivery and manipulation of course
content. The e-learning system developed for this project exists in a hierarchical structure. All requests
from users are received into a top level agent. The top level agent then process the specific command
received and sends the request to a control agent that corresponds to the information agent required to
process the command. Once the command is executed, the result of the command is sent back to the top
level control agent who then delivers the result to the user. Each information agent has a corresponding
control agent that filters the command requested and passes the command on to the information agent.
This creates a pairing between a control agent and information agent. The relationship between control
agents and information agents is one to many. A single control agent processes requests for all of the
information agents it connects to. Figure 2 depicts a high level diagram of the hierarchical structure of
the agent system.
Figure 2 also shows the distribution of work based on the user that will be interacting with a specific
agent. The Instructor, Student, and Registrar designation help describe the type of processing that will
be done by that agent. Also depicted in Figure 2, are 5 types of agents that make up this system. They
include the Master Agent Control Client, Agent Control Client, Maintenance Agent, Notification and
Recommendation Agent, and Student Information Agent. Communications among the agents occur
through the control clients. The system is designed such that, no agent can communicate directly with
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