CRUTCH: An Integration Framework for Web Service and MAS

摘要

This paper proposed a novel software evolution methodology CRUTCH that can rapidly integrate partners' web services into internal agentified legacy system running on JADE. CRUTCH achieves this goal in two ways. On one hand, CRUTCH provides an architecture view that extends the standard FIPA's agent platform with a web service finder agent named WSFinder; on the other hand, CRUTCH developed a package and a XML schema of web service find criteria, providing a configurable way for WSAgent (agents who invoke external web service ) development. The simplified developing process can successfully alleviate the developer's pain and rapidly make the enterprise qualified for the competitive and cooperative business environment.