Dynamic Grid Tasks Composition and Distribution through Agents

This paper presents a multi-agent system called GAIN (Grid Agent Infrastructure), which can be used for the development of flexible agent-based Grid systems. The system supports users both in the development and execution of Grid applications. In particular, GAIN allows the definition of workflow applications by composing different tasks made available by the Grid nodes. Furthermore, it follows the different phases of the execution of the workflow providing transparent allocation and re-allocation of the tasks on the different nodes of the Grid. A first prototype of the system has been realized by using the JADE agent development software and it has been tested in lab trials involving a network of different JADE platforms. In these trials, tasks provided both by the agents of the system and by external legacy software systems have been composed.