Mobile Objects and Agents (MOA)

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of the Mobile Objects and Agents (MOA) project at the Open Group Research Institute. MOA was designed to support migration, communication and control of agents. It was implemented on top of the Java Virtual Machine, without any modifications to it. The initial project goals were to support communication across agent migration, as a means for collaborative work; and to provide extensive resource control, as a basic support for countering denial of service attacks. In the course of the project we added two further goals: compliance with the Java Beans component model, which provides for additional configurability and customization of agent system and agent applications; and interoperability, which allows cooperation with other agent systems.