ABSTRACT
Ever since the development of the web in the early 1990s, we have heard the term agents. Hie problem is, it has been very difficult for people to agree with what agents mean. Some say agents are simply processes and some others say agents are Java applets. Yet a third group says that agents are processes that can jump from machine to machine and can execute everywhere. A fourth group says that agents are processes that have to communicate according to some well-defined protocol. In fact all of these definitions are correct. That is, agents are essentially processes that function on behalf of other processes and users. But they have to satisfy some agreed upon method of communi cation.
