Integrating Peer-to-Peer and Multi-Agent Technologies for the Realization of Content Sharing Applications

The combination of peer-to-peer networking and multi-agent systems seems be a perfect solution for the realization of applications that broaden on the Internet. In fact, while peer-to-peer networking infrastructures and protocols provide the suitable discovery and communication services necessary for developing effective and reliable applications, multi-agent systems allow to realize autonomous, social, reactive and proactive peers that make the development of intelligent and flexible application possible. This paper presents how JADE, one of the most known software framework for the development of multi-agent systems, has been extended to take advantage of the JXTA networking infrastructure and protocols, and describes a system, called RAIS, that has been realized thanks to such extended version of the JADE software framework and that provides a set of advanced services for content sharing and retrieval.