Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The main duty of the Connection Adviser agent is to filter the list (received from the
Scanner agent) of mobile devices as well as requested services. The filtration is carried out
with respect to a given (usually heuristic) criterion. Information needed for the filtration is
stored in a local database. The Connection Adviser agent sends the filtered list to the
Connection Initiator agent, who takes on the task of initiating a connection with the
Personal Assistant onboard the mobile device. This agent generates the so-called
Connection Object, through which a communication with the mobile device is established
via Bluetooth connection. Once this connection has been established, the Connection
Initiator generates an agent to which it hands over the control of the connection, called a
Connection agent.
From this point on, all communications between the InfoStation and the Personal Assistant
are directed by the Connection agent. The internal architecture of the Connection agent
contains three threads: an agent thread used for communication with the Query Manager
agent, and a Send thread and Receive thread, which look after each direction of the wireless
communication with the mobile device.
The Query Manager performs one of the most crucial tasks within the InfoStation
architecture. It determines where information received from the mobile device is to be
directed, e.g. directly to simple services, or via Interface agents to sophisticated services. It
also transforms messages coming from the Connection agent into messages of the correct
protocols to be understood by the relevant services, i.e. for simple services - UDDI or
SOAP, or for increasingly sophisticated services by using more complicated, semantic-
oriented protocols (e.g. OWL-S [OWL-S,2010]). The Query Manager agent also interacts
with the Content Adaptation agent in order to facilitate the Personal Assistant with
increasingly contextualised service content. This Content Adaptation agent, operating
under the remit of the Query Manager agent, essentially performs the role of an
adaptation engine, which takes in the profile information provided by the Profile
Processor agent, and executes the requisite adaptation operations on the service content
(e.g. file compression, image resizing etc.)
Fig. 5. The Agent-Oriented Middleware Architecture
