William Wright

Extremely large, complex software systems stretch the limits of modern design and implementation techniques. Agent-based computing is an approach to design and implementation that facilitates the design and development of sophisticated systems by viewing them as a society of independent communicating agents working together to meet the goals of the system. Java programming language's rich support for networking, security, and introspection make it well suited to implementing a distributed agent-based computing system. This article explores the basics of agent-based computing and examines an open source Java toolkit for building distributed agent societies. Often one of the most contentious parts of agent-based computing is agreeing on the definition of an "agent". In th... (more)

JavaBeans Customized

One of the great things about the JavaBeans specification is the flexibility it affords component developers in how they package their beans. As a bean developer, all you need is a class with a no-argument constructor that supports serialization and it's a bean. If you follow some simple naming conventions, most integrated development environments (IDEs) can tell enough about your bean t... (more)