Abstract: A method of enabling collaboration between software components distributed across a plurality of data processing resources connected by a data processing network, said software components including service components (32) capable of collaborating to perform tasks and management components (34, 36, 38) for supporting collaboration of the service components, wherein said service components are capable of collaborating across a plurality of service platforms, each said service platform comprising a plurality of service components and a platform management component for controlling the registration of service components in the service platform, a component on a service platform being identifiable by at least one network address, said method comprising: transmitting a query from a first service platform to a second service platform, said query requesting identification of one or more further service platforms; and receiving a response from said first service platform, said response including data defining a networ

Abstract: The invention is concerned with a work allocation system having a plurality of agents that bid for work in accordance with preferences and behaviour of resources corresponding thereto.

Abstract: A computer-assisted method of designing a multi agent system (23) comprises storing predefined role models (21,22) within a library (20), selecting desired models from the library, and merging them into a single system model (23). Each model (21,22) has associated with it one or more compositional constraints (25,26), and these are automatically taken into consideration during role composition by a synthesis engine (24) during the merging process.

Abstract: Customized process plans are generated by weaving customizing process aspects into generic process plans. The aspects as stored contain markers and the system selects a generic process plan and searches it for the marker(s). If the marker is located, content from the relevant aspect is woven into the generic process plan at that point. Customized process plans can be produced for instance for particular customer types or service types and local resource availability can be taken into account.