Abstract: The invention provides methods and systems for assisting in the redistribution of resources between entities each having sets of tasks which must be performed, pools of resources for performing tasks, and a manager capable of reviewing the tasks and the resources of the entity and determining therefrom surplus resources not required for the performance of the tasks of that entity, and sought-after resources required for the performance of tasks not able to be met by the resources of that entity. The method comprises: receiving offers of surplus resources and requests of sought-after resources from each entity; subjecting received offers and requests to an optimisation procedure to determine a set of matched pairs, each pair comprising an offer received from an entity and a request received from another entity, said offer and request having corresponding characteristics; and communicating information relating to matched pairs to the respective entities.

Abstract: A community of collaborative software agents work together in a domain to provide functionality such as providing of communications services or control of a chemical process. A system is provided for building such communities of collaborative software agents. Each software agent has data concerning its relationship(s) with other agents of the community. A visualizer is provided for debugging the community which offers several partial views of the communications between and within agents, organized according to the relationships between agents. By using multiple partial views, such as messages between selected agents and job status reports within single agents, the visualizer is capable of particularly effective debugging.