As IT industries develop, upgrade and diversify, heterogeneous operating
environments running a mix of new and legacy systems become increasingly
important. Such environments are currently inadequate due to lack of compatibility
with each other. This thesis investigates how agents can be utilised to facilitate
such heterogeneous environments, aiding enterprise systems in building bridges
between incompatible software and hardware systems. An autonomous agent has
independent agency and decision-making astuteness. When placed in
heterogeneous environments to interact with other such agents, the consequences of
its action and its preferred choice of actions are greatly influenced by actions of
other agents interacting in heterogeneous environments.
The main objectives of this thesis include examining the roles of agents in
heterogeneous operating environments, development of a novel multi agent base
architecture and an associated framework for single and heterogeneous
environment. The research work also studies the plausible application to test the
developed proof of concept by developing application and using the framework
that utilises Windows services in a totally incompatible Solaris based Sun Ray ultra
thin client environment.
The work includes a novel method of modeling agent based communication
architecture suitable for correspondence between two inherently different operating
systems - Solaris and Microsoft Windows. The circumstances in which
coordination or coordination failure occurs between these systems are investigated.
The proposed method of agent based communication that can potentially overcome
the barriers formed by two completely different software and hardware
architectural regimes.
An analysis of printing services in MS Windows and Solaris environments, review
the age long problem of lack of device drivers for commonly (and cheaply)
available Ink Jet printers for Unix (and like) operating systems. A novel method is
proposed that uses agents in heterogeneous environment to overcome this problem.
A new architecture that utilises Windows based printing services on a Sun Ray
ultra thin client is presented to test and evaluate the proof of concept.
This thesis is motivated by the need to provide a low cost printing solution to Sun
Ray users. Most Windows based desktop users currently have access to variety of
low cost printing solutions. Printer vendors ship device drivers only for Windows
or at most Macintosh, as other operating systems such as Solaris, MVS, z/OS are
used for corporate solutions and low cost desktop printing have not been a major
requirement in the past.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219580 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Mathur, Abhishek, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Information Sciences & Engineering |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Abhishek Mathur |
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