Abstract: An agent oriented computing environment is disclosed comprising an "agent shell" means which can be used by developers for constructing agent computing entities according to their own functionality requirements; an agent enabling layer, providing basic communication, brokering, and negotiation facilities between agent computing entities; and an underlying transport mechanism based on a prior art CORBA platform. Agents communicate with each other using an agent communication language enabling them to interact to domain specific problems. Agents can pass information to each other in ACL messages describing their own vocabularies concerning logic (ontologies). Various services for locating and connecting agents are provided in the agent oriented environment, such as a broker service for locating and finding agents.