R. Weinreich, R. Plösch: Remote Configuration of Agent-Based Component Systems, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 2, no. 6, pp. 67-84, November 2003, doi:10.5381/jot.2003.2.6.a1.
The nearly omnipresence of the Internet and the steady increase of wireless computing and mobile devices require highly dynamic adaptable distributed system architectures. Building such architectures needs a combination of key concepts from component technology and distributed systems. Mobile agents provide this combination. We use mobile agents as the building blocks of a component-based system for remote supervision and control of both hard- and software in a distributed environment. In this paper we concentrate on the configuration of individual components and component relationships in our system. We identify requirements for remote configuration of agentbased component systems and discuss architectural and user interface related issues of our approaches. We use a code-on-demand approach for supporting elaborate user interfaces. We use a generative approach based on enhanced meta-information for reducing development effort. The presented approaches are applicable for remote configuration of component-based systems in general and consider additional requirements imposed through the use of mobile agent technology.