Mobile agents have engrossed substantial attention in recent years, especially in fault tolerance researches and several approaches have emerged. Fault tolerance design tends to put a stop to incomplete or complete loss of the agent in the face of failures. Despite these developments, reliability issues still remain a critical challenge. Moreover, there is no comprehensive detail bringing together, summaries of the existing efforts of researches in order to focus attention where it is needed most. Therefore, our objective in this systematic literature review (SR) is to explore and analyze the existing fault tolerance implementations in order to bring about the state-of-the-art and the challenges in mobile agent’s fault tolerance approaches. We used studies from a number of relevant article sources, and our results showed the existence of twenty six articles. Our analysis indicates that the existing approaches are not generic and each focuses on a specific aspect of the problem, usually in one or two specific fault models which impacts on agent’s reliability. The implication of the study is to give a clear direction to future researchers in this area for a better reliable and transparent fault tolerance in mobile agents.
Published in | American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications (Volume 2, Issue 5) |
DOI | 10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11 |
Page(s) | 111-124 |
Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Copyright |
Copyright © The Author(s), 2013. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Mobile Agents, Fault Tolerance, Replication, Check-Pointing, Systematic Review, Platforms
[1] | W. Qu and H. Shen, Analysis of Mobile Agents’ Fault-Tolerant Behavior, IEEE/WIC/ACM, Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, 2004, pp 377 – 380, ISBN: 0-7695-2101-0 |
[2] | L. L. Pullum, Software Fault Tolerance Techniques and Implementation, Artech House, 2001, ISBN 1-58053-137-7 |
[3] | N. M. Karnik and A. R. Tripathi, Design Issues in Mobile Agent Programming Systems, IEEE Concurrency, Vol. 6 , No. 3, 1998, pp 52-61, ISSN:1092-3063 |
[4] | W. Dake and C.P. Leguizamo and K. Mori, Mobile Agent Fault Tolerance in Autonomous Decentralized Database Systems, IEEE, Proceedings of the Autonomous Decentralized System on The 2nd International Workshop, 2002, ISBN:0-7803-7624-2 |
[5] | G. Jin, B. Ahn and K. D. Lee, A Fault-Tolerant Protocol for Mobile Agent, Springer, Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, 2004, pp. 993–1001, ISBN 978-3-540-22057-2 |
[6] | G. Serugendo and A. Romanovsky, Designing Fault-Tolerant Mobile System, Springer, International Workshop on Scientific Engineering for Distributed Java Applications, 2003, pp 185-201, ISBN: 978-3-540-00679-4 |
[7] | S. Pleisch, and A. Schiper, Fault-tolerant Mobile Agent Execution, IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 52 , Nr. 2, 2003, ISSN: 0018-9340 |
[8] | T. Park, I. Byun, H. Kim and H. Y. Yeom, The Performance of Checkpointing and Replication Schemes for Fault Tolerant Mobile Agent Systems, IEEE Computer Society, Proceedings of 21th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, 2002, ISBN:0-7695-1659-9 |
[9] | W. Qu, H. Shen and X. Defago, A Survey of Mobile Agent-Based Fault-Tolerant Technology, IEEE, Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing Applications and Technologies, 2005, pp 446-450, ISBN:0-7695-2405-2 |
[10] | J. P. Briot, S. Aknine, I. Alvarez and Z. Guessoum, Multi-Agent Systems and Fault-Tolerance: State-of-the-art Elements, EuroControl Technical Report, LIP6 & MODECO- CReSTIC, 2007 |
[11] | S. Pleisch, State-of-the-art of Mobile Agent Computing: Security, Fault Tolerance, and Transaction Support, Research Report, IBM Research, Z. R. Lab. Switzerland, 1999 |
[12] | S. Pleisch and A. Schiper, FATOMAS-A Fault-Tolerant Mobile Agent System Based on the Agent-Dependent Approach, IEEE, Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, 2001, pp 215-224, ISBN:0-7695-1101-5 |
[13] | L. M. Silva, G. Soares, P. Martins, V. Batista and L. Santos, The Performance of Mobile Agent Platforms, IEEE, Proceedings of First International Symposium on Third International Symposium on Mobile Agents, 1999, pp. 270-271, ISBN: 0-7695-0340-3 |
[14] | K. Park, A Fault-Tolerant Mobile Agent Model in Replicated Secure Services, Springer, Proceedings of International Conference Computational Science and Its Applications, Vol. 3043, pp 500-509, 2004, ISBN 978-3-540-22054-1 |
[15] | P. Braun, and W. Rossak, Mobile Agents: Basic Concepts, Mobility Models, and the Tracy Toolkit, Morgan Kaufmann, 2005, ISBN-13: 978-1558608177 |
[16] | R. S. Gray, D. Kotz, G. Cybenko, and D. Rus, Mobile Agents: Motivations and State-of-the-Art Systems, Dartmouth College, Technical Report: TR2000-365, 2000 |
[17] | D. Kotz and R. S. Gray, Mobile Agents and the Future of the Internet, ACM, ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Vol. 33, Nr. 3, 1999, pp 7-13, ISSN: 0163-5980 |
[18] | D. B. Lange and M. Oshima, Seven Good Reasons for Mobile Agents, ACM, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 42, Nr. 3, 1999, pp 88-89, ISSN:0001-0782 |
[19] | M. Eid, H. Artail, A. Kayssi, and A. Chehab. Trends in Mobile Agent Applications, Journal of Research and Practice in Information Technology, Vol. 37, No. 4, November 2005 |
[20] | R. Boutaba and J. Xiao, Network Management: State of the Art, Kluwer, B.V., Proceedings of the IFIP 17th World Computer Congress - TC6 Stream on Communication Systems: The State of the Art, 2002, pp 127-146, ISBN: 1-4020-7168-X |
[21] | L. M. Silva, P. Simões, G. Soares, P. Martins, V. Batista, C. Renato, L. Almeida and N. Stohr, JAMES: A Platform of Mobile Agents for the Management of Telecommunication Networks, Springer, Proceedings of Third International Workshop Intelligent Agents for Telecommunication Applications, Vol. 1699, 1999, pp 76-95, ISBN 978-3-540-665397 |
[22] | O. Kachirski and R. Guha, Intrusion Detection Using Mobile Agents in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, IEEE, Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Knowledge Media Networking, 2002, pp 153-158, ISBN:0-7695-1778-1 |
[23] | B. Kitchenham and S. Charters, Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering, Keele University and Durham University Joint Report, Tech. Rep. EBSE 2007-001, 2007 |
[24] | J. W. Creswell and Dana L. Miller, Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry, Theory Into Practice, 1543-0421, Volume 39, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 124 – 130 |
[25] | S. Summiya, K. Ijaz, U. Manzoor and A. A. Shahid, A Fault Tolerant Infrastructure for Mobile Agents, IEEE, Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling Control and Automation and International Conference on Intelligent Agents Web Technologies and International Commerce, 2006, pp 235-235, ISBN:0-7695-2731-0 |
[26] | K. K. Leung and K. W. Ng, A fault-tolerance mechanism for mobile agent systems, Proceedings. 2006 International Conference on Intelligence For Modelling, Control and Automation. Jointly with International Conference on Intelligent Agents, Web Technologies and Internet Commerce, 2005, pp.7 ISBN-10: 0 7695 2504 0 |
[27] | M.R. Lyu and T. Y. Wong, A progressive fault tolerant mechanism in mobile agent systems SCI 2003. 7th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics Proceedings, 2003, pp. 299-306 , Vol.9 ISBN-10: 980 6560 01 9 |
[28] | S. Mellouli, A reorganization strategy to build fault-tolerant multi-agent systems Advances in Artificial Intelligence. 20th Conference of the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence, Canadian AI 2007. Proceedings 2007, Vol.4509, pp. 61-72, ISBN-10: 3 540 72664 0 |
[29] | F. M. A. Silva and R. Popescu-Zeletin, An Approach for Providing Mobile Agent Fault Tolerance, Springer, Proceedings of Second International Workshop on Mobile Agents, Vol. 1477, 1998, pp 14-25, ISBN: 978-3-540-64959-5 |
[30] | T. Osman, W. Wagealla and A. Bargiela, An Approach to Rollback Recovery of Collaborating Mobile Agents, IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, Vol. 34, Nr. 1, 2004, pp 48-57, ISSN: 1094-6977 |
[31] | X. Meng and H. Zhang, An efficient fault-tolerant scheme for mobile agent execution First International Symposium on Systems and Control in Aerospace and Astronautics, 2006, pp.5, ISBN-10: 0 7803 9395 3 |
[32] | J. Chen; H. Shi; C. Chen; Z. Hong; P. Zhong, An efficient forward and backward fault-tolerant mobile agent system, Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications, 2008, pp.61-6, ISBN-13: 978-0-7695-3382-7 |
[33] | M. Olivier, B. Marin , S. Pierre, G. Zahia and B. Jean-Pierre, DARX - A Self-healing Framework for Agents, Springer, Third International Conference, 2007, Vol. 4322/2007, pp. 88-105, ISBN: 978-3-540-71155-1 |
[34] | M.R. Lyu, X. Chen and T. Y. Wong, Design and Evaluation of a Fault-Tolerant Mobile-Agent System, IEEE, Intelligent Systems, Vol. 19 , Nr. 5, 2004, pp 32-38, ISSN: 1541-1672 |
[35] | Y. Tanaka, N. Hayashibara, T. Enokido and M. Takizawa, Fault-tolerant distributed systems in a mobile agent model, Seventeenth International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, 2006, pp.5, 2006 ISBN-10: 0 7695 2641 1 |
[36] | L. M. Silva, V. Batista and J. G. Silva, Fault-Tolerant Execution of Mobile Agents, IEEE, Proceedings International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, 2000, pp 135-143, ISBN: 0-7695-0707-7 |
[37] | FIPA, http://www.fipa.org, [Accessed August 26, 2009] |
[38] | K. Rothermel and M. Strasser, A fault-tolerant Protocol for Providing the Exactly-Once Property of Mobile Agents, Proceedings Seventeenth IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems 1998, pp. 100-8, ISBN-10: 0 8186 9218 9 |
[39] | A. Fedoruk and R. Deters, Improving Fault-Tolerance by Replicating Agents, ACM, Proceedings of the first international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems: part 2, 2002, pp 737-744, ISBN:1-58113-480-0 |
[40] | T. Park, I. Byun and H. Y. Yeom, Lazy Agent Replication and Asynchronous Consensus for the Fault-Tolerant Mobile Agent System, Springer, Proceedings of Third International IFIP-TC6 Networking Conference, 2004, pp 1060-1071, ISBN: 978-3-540-21959-0 |
[41] | T. Park and I. Byun, Low Overhead Agent Replication for the Reliable Mobile Agent System, Springer, Proceedings of 9th International Euro-Par Conference, Vol. 2790, 2003, pp 1170-1179, ISBN 978-3-540-40788-1 |
[42] | H. Hamidi and K. Mohammadi, Modeling Fault Tolerant and Secure Mobile Agent Execution in Distributed Systems, Idea Group, International Journal of Intelligent Information Technologies, Vol. 2, Nr. 1, 2006 |
[43] | D. Johansen, K. Marzullo, F.B. Schneider, K. Jacobsen, and D. Zagorodnov, NAP: practical fault-tolerance for itinerant computations, Proceedings. 19th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems 1999, pp. 180-9, ISBN-10: 0 7695 0222 9 |
[44] | J. Yang, J. Cao, W. Wu and C. Xu, Parallel algorithms for fault-tolerant mobile agent execution, Distributed and Parallel Computing. 6th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing, ICA3PP. Proceedings, 2005, pp. 246-56, ISBN-10: 3 540 29235 7 |
[45] | M. Tosic and A. Zaslavsky, Reliable multi-agent systems with persistent publish/subscribe messaging, 18th Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, IEA/AIE 2005. Proceedings, 2005 Vol. 3533, pp.165-74, ISBN-10: 3 540 26551-1 |
[46] | P. Taesoon and Y. Jaehwan, The K-Fault-Tolerant Checkpointing Scheme for the Reliable Mobile Agent System, Parallel and Distributed Computing: Applications and Technologies. 5th International Conference, PDCAT 2004. pp.577-81, ISBN-10: 3 540 24013 6 |
[47] | T. Kaneda, Y. Tanaka, T. Enokido and M. Takizawa, Transactional agent model for fault-tolerant object systems, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, 2005, Vol. 2, pp. 1133-1138 |
[48] | T. Park, J. Youn and D. Kim, Using adaptive agents for the fault-tolerant mobile computing system, 6th International Conference, Proceedings 2006, Vol. 3993, pp. 807-814 ISBN-10: 3540343830 |
[49] | H. K. Yeom, H. Y. T. Park and H. Park, The Cost of Checkpointing, Logging and Recovery for the Mobile Agent Systems, Proceedings of Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing, 2002, pp 45-48, ISBN: 0-7695-1852-4 |
[50] | J. Briot, Z. Guessoum, S. Charpentier, S. Aknine, O. Marin and P. Sens, Dynamic Adaptation of Replication Strategies for Reliable Agents, Proceeding of 2nd Symposium on Adaptive Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2002, pp 10-19 |
[51] | M. Q. Patton, Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods, Sage Publications, Inc; 3rd edition, 2001, ISBN-10: 0761919716 |
[52] | E. N. (Mootaz) Elnozahy, L. Alvisi, Y. Wang and D. B. Johnson, A Survey of Rollback-Recovery Protocols in Message-Passing Systems, ACM, ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 34, Nr. 3, 2002, pp 375-408, ISSN:0360-0300 |
[53] | S. Mishra and P. Xie, Interagent Communication and Synchronization Support in the DaAgent Mobile Agent-Based Computing System, IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 14, Nr. 3, 2003, ISSN:1045-9219 |
[54] | L. Bettini and R. D. Nicola, Translating Strong Mobility into Weak Mobility, Springer, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mobile Agents, Vol. 2240, 2001, pp 182-197, ISBN:3-540-42952-2 |
[55] | N. Suri, J. M. Bradshaw, M. R. Breedy, P. T. Groth, G. A. Hill and R. Jeffers, Strong Mobility and Fine-Grained Resource Control in NOMADS, Springer, Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Agents Systems and Applications and the 4th International Symposium on Mobile Agents, 2000, pp 2-15, ISBN:3-540-41052-X |
[56] | R. A. Bourne, A. L. G. Hayzelden, Rachel Bourne and P. Buckle, Agent Technology for Communication Infrastructures, Wiley, 2001, ISBN: 0471498157 |
[57] | Aglet, http://aglets.sourceforge.net/, [Accessed May 21, 2009] |
[58] | T. Walsh, N. Paciorek and D. Wong, Security and Reliability in Concordia, IEEE, Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Vol. 7, 1998, pp 44-53, ISBN: 0-8186-8255-8 |
[59] | FIPA-OS Tutorial, http://fipa-os.sourceforge.net/tutorials.htm, [Accessed August 26, 2009] |
[60] | Agents Technology in Europe, ACTS project InfoWin, 1999 |
[61] | JADE - Java Agent DEvelopment Framework, http://jade.tilab.com/, [Accessed August 26, 2009] |
[62] | MadKit, http://www.madkit.org, [Accessed May 21, 2009] |
[63] | MadKit: A generic Multi-agent platform, ACM, 2000. |
[64] | J. Baumann, F. Hohl, K. Rothermel, M. Strasser and W. Theilmann, MOLE: A Mobile Agent System, John Wiley & Sons, Software—Practice & Experience, Vol. 32, 2002, pp 575–603 |
[65] | Naptel, http://www.ece.eng.wayne.edu/~czxu/software/naplet.html, [Accessed August 26, 2009] |
[66] | A. Grimstrup, R. Gray, D. Kotz, M. Breedy, M. Carvalho, T. Cowin, D. Chacón, J. Barton, C. Garrett and M. Hofmann, Toward Interoperability of Mobile-Agent Systems, Springer, Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Mobile Agents, 2002, pp 106-120, ISBN: 978-3-540-00085-3 |
[67] | D. Johansen, R. V. Renesse, F. B. Schneider, N. P. Sudmann and K. Jacobsen, A Tacoma Retrospective, John Wiley & Sons, Software—Practice & Experience, Vol. 32 , Nr. 6, 2002, pp 605-619, ISSN:0038-0644 |
[68] | Voyager 3.1.1 Developer Guide, Object Space, 1999 |
[69] | M. J. Fischer, N. A. Lynch and M. S. Paterson, Impossibility of Distributed Consensus With One Faulty Process, ACM, Journal of the ACM, Vol. 32, Nr. 2, 1985, pp 374-382, ISSN: 0004-5411 |
APA Style
Bassey Echeng Isong, Eyaye Bekele. (2013). A Systematic Review of Fault Tolerance in Mobile Agents. American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 2(5), 111-124. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11
ACS Style
Bassey Echeng Isong; Eyaye Bekele. A Systematic Review of Fault Tolerance in Mobile Agents. Am. J. Softw. Eng. Appl. 2013, 2(5), 111-124. doi: 10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11
AMA Style
Bassey Echeng Isong, Eyaye Bekele. A Systematic Review of Fault Tolerance in Mobile Agents. Am J Softw Eng Appl. 2013;2(5):111-124. doi: 10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11
@article{10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11, author = {Bassey Echeng Isong and Eyaye Bekele}, title = {A Systematic Review of Fault Tolerance in Mobile Agents}, journal = {American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications}, volume = {2}, number = {5}, pages = {111-124}, doi = {10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11}, url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11}, eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajsea.20130205.11}, abstract = {Mobile agents have engrossed substantial attention in recent years, especially in fault tolerance researches and several approaches have emerged. Fault tolerance design tends to put a stop to incomplete or complete loss of the agent in the face of failures. Despite these developments, reliability issues still remain a critical challenge. Moreover, there is no comprehensive detail bringing together, summaries of the existing efforts of researches in order to focus attention where it is needed most. Therefore, our objective in this systematic literature review (SR) is to explore and analyze the existing fault tolerance implementations in order to bring about the state-of-the-art and the challenges in mobile agent’s fault tolerance approaches. We used studies from a number of relevant article sources, and our results showed the existence of twenty six articles. Our analysis indicates that the existing approaches are not generic and each focuses on a specific aspect of the problem, usually in one or two specific fault models which impacts on agent’s reliability. The implication of the study is to give a clear direction to future researchers in this area for a better reliable and transparent fault tolerance in mobile agents.}, year = {2013} }
TY - JOUR T1 - A Systematic Review of Fault Tolerance in Mobile Agents AU - Bassey Echeng Isong AU - Eyaye Bekele Y1 - 2013/09/20 PY - 2013 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11 DO - 10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11 T2 - American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications JF - American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications JO - American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications SP - 111 EP - 124 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2327-249X UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20130205.11 AB - Mobile agents have engrossed substantial attention in recent years, especially in fault tolerance researches and several approaches have emerged. Fault tolerance design tends to put a stop to incomplete or complete loss of the agent in the face of failures. Despite these developments, reliability issues still remain a critical challenge. Moreover, there is no comprehensive detail bringing together, summaries of the existing efforts of researches in order to focus attention where it is needed most. Therefore, our objective in this systematic literature review (SR) is to explore and analyze the existing fault tolerance implementations in order to bring about the state-of-the-art and the challenges in mobile agent’s fault tolerance approaches. We used studies from a number of relevant article sources, and our results showed the existence of twenty six articles. Our analysis indicates that the existing approaches are not generic and each focuses on a specific aspect of the problem, usually in one or two specific fault models which impacts on agent’s reliability. The implication of the study is to give a clear direction to future researchers in this area for a better reliable and transparent fault tolerance in mobile agents. VL - 2 IS - 5 ER -