Agent Construction Tools(3)

MadKit
Madkit Development Group
Madkit (freely downloadable at http://www.madkit.org. is a publicly available
 multiagent platform based on organizational concepts. This platform is based
on the organization based conceptual model called AGR (Agent/Group/Role) in wh
ich an agent is considered as an active entity which communicates by message p
assing with other agents and plays roles in groups. This organizational model
eases the design and development of multiagent systems and allows for the dyna
mic construction of applications.

Madkit, which is written in Java, works in a distributed way accross machines
(with different OS) without needing a central server. Communications and group
s can be freely distributed and the distribution is performed transparently at
 the application level. Agents can be programmed in multiple language. For the
 moment Java, Scheme (Kawa) and Jess (a rule based language written in Java an
d based on the Clips system) are the first available programming languages. Ot
her languages will be available in the future.

The madkit architecture is totally modular. The micro-kernel (less than 60k of
 compiled Java code) is extended by a set of various libraries of messages, pr
obes and agents. System services and debugging tools are themselves provided a
s agents, making system extensions easy and simple to implement.The reduced si
ze of the micro-kernel, combined with the principle of modular services manage
d by agents enable a range of multiple, scalable platforms and construction of
 libraries of specialized agent models.

As an example of its modularity, Madkit comes with tools for building simulati
ons and artificial life applications using a specialized synchronous engine wh
ich allows for thousands of agents to work together on a single machine.

MadKit comes with an easy to use graphic box but, as agents are decoupled from 数据挖掘研究院
 their interface, it is easy to embed MadKit agents into a specific applicatio
n.  


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Microsoft Agents
Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Agent is a set of programmable software services that supports the p
resentation of interactive animated characters within the Microsoft Windows in
terface. Developers can use characters as interactive assistants to introduce,
 guide, entertain, or otherwise enhance their Web pages or applications in add
ition to the conventional use of windows, menus, and controls.

Microsoft Agent enables software developers and Web authors to incorporate a n
ew form of user interaction, known as conversational interfaces, that leverage

s natural aspects of human social communication. In addition to mouse and keyb
oard input, Microsoft Agent includes optional support for speech recognition s
o applications can respond to voice commands. Characters can respond using syn
thesized speech, recorded audio, or text in a cartoon word balloon.

The conversational interface approach facilitated by the Microsoft Agent servi
ces does not replace conventional graphical user interface (GUI) design. Inste
ad, character interaction can be easily blended with the conventional interfac
e components such as windows, menus, and controls to extend and enhance your a
pplication's interface.

Microsoft Agent's programming interfaces make it easy to animate a character t
o respond to user input. Animated characters appear in their own window, provi
ding maximum flexibility for where they can be displayed on the screen. Micros
oft Agent includes an ActiveX control that makes its services accessible to pr
ogramming languages that support ActiveX, including Web scripting languages su
ch as VisualBasic Scripting Edition (VBScript). This means that character inte
raction can be programmed from HTML pages.

Microsoft Agent requires Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer and ActiveX.  

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NetStepper
JW's Software Gems
NetStepper lets you design, test and run internet agents. By using twelve easy
 to learn action steps, you can program agents that interact with web pages, f
tp sites and even Email servers. NetSteppers' powerful variable parsing and re
placement make it easy to write scripts that massage web data and perform acti
ons based on web page content.  


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Network Query Language
NQL Solutions
NQL is a scripting language ideal for building intelligent agents, bots and we
b applications. Strong communications is an important part of NQL's feature se
t. Internet access to common protocols such as HTTP, FTP, NNTP, and TELNET are
 built into the language, as well as support for up-and-coming standards such 数据挖掘实验室
as LDAP. Custom TCP/IP can be implemented easily using NQL's socket programmin
g facilities. E-mail is easily accessed, as are databases and desktop applicat
ions.  


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Pathwalker
Fujitsu
Pathwalker is a distributed process-oriented and agent-oriented programming li
brary written entirely in Java, which was developed in Fujitsu Laboratories Lt
d.

Pathwalker has some features which are useful mainly in distributed programmin
g, such as store-and-forward asynchronous message passing, globally unique ide
ntifier of light-weight processes, mobile-code handling utility and agent/acti
on programming introduced from Kafka library which was developed prior to Path
walker.

Pathwalker runs on both JDK1.1 and Java2 SDK(JDK1.2). We have tested it using
JDK1.1.8 and Java2 SDK on Solaris2.5.1/2.6 and Windows95/NT (only reading a JA
R file in the mobile-code utility requires Java2). On Solaris, we recommend ru
nning Pathwalker applications by native threads, because we have often encount
ered problems with socket communication hanging on green threads, especially o
n JDK1.2.1 or earlier versions of reference implementations.