Abstract: A system for building collaborative software agents is provided with a set of editors for capturing data for installation in the individual agents. The collaborative software agents will normally form a community, including some standard agents, provided by the system, and will collaborate to provide functionality in a domain selected by the user. Each collaborative software agent built by the system is provided with co-ordination policies, selected by the user, and represented by a co-ordination graph. A single collaborative software agent can be provided with more than one collaborative policy and is capable of running more than one collaborative policy simultaneously with different agents of the system. An exception handler flags an exception during use of the collaborative agents in the relevant domain when the value of a variable for an agent conflicts with a relevant constraint.

Abstract: A community of collaborative software agents works together in a domain to provide functionality such as provision of communications services or control of a chemical process. A scheduler is built into each collaborative agent which schedules tasks allocated to that particular agent and tasks sub-allocated by that agent. The scheduler has a mechanism for over-booking tasks for any one agent. It can also make tentative bookings which can be overwritten or timed out.