Peer-Con: A Process Contracting Overlay

Abstract

A peer to peer process contracting overlay what we call Peer-Con is developed. The system is an extension of Java Agent Development Framework (JADE) and uses IEEE Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) Agent Communication Language (ACL) standard. Cost aware flexible representation of process capabilities; description of an operator to decide on whether given capabilities turnout to an agreement or not and self organization of peer connectivity for better contracting performance are distinguishing features of the system. The system can easily be adapted to different domains while the core functionality remains the same. Practical use of Peer-Con is shown by an application from Digital Signal Processing Module (DSPM) product planning domain.