Embedding agents in business applications using enterprise integration patterns

This paper addresses the issue of integrating agents with a variety of external resources and services, as found in enterprise computing environments. We propose an approach for interfacing agents and existing message routing and mediation engines based on the endpoint concept from the enterprise integration patterns of Hohpe and Woolf. A design for agent endpoints is presented, and an architecture for connecting the Jason agent platform to the Apache Camel enterprise integration framework using this type of endpoint is described. The approach is illustrated by means of a business process use case, and a number of Camel routes are presented. These demonstrate the benefits of interfacing agents to external services via a specialised message routing tool that supports enterprise integration patterns

A decentralized framework for cross administrative domain data sharing

Federation of messaging and storage platforms located in remote datacenters is an essential functionality to share data among geographically distributed platforms. When systems are administered by the same owner data replication reduces data access latency bringing data closer to applications and enables fault tolerance to face disaster recovery of an entire location. When storage platforms are administered by different owners data replication across different administrative domains is essential for enterprise application data integration. Contents and services managed by different software platforms need to be integrated to provide richer contents and services. Clients may need to share subsets of data in order to enable collaborative analysis and service integration. Platforms usually include proprietary federation functionalities and specific APIs to let external software and platforms access their internal data. These different techniques may not be applicable to all environments and networks due to security and technological restrictions. Moreover the federation of dispersed nodes under a decentralized administration scheme is still a research issue. This thesis is a contribution along this research direction as it introduces and describes a framework, called \u201cWideGroups\u201d, directed towards the creation and the management of an automatic federation and integration of widely dispersed platform nodes. It is based on groups to exchange messages among distributed applications located in different remote datacenters. Groups are created and managed using client side programmatic configuration without touching servers. WideGroups enables the extension of the software platform services to nodes belonging to different administrative domains in a wide area network environment. It lets different nodes form ad-hoc overlay networks on-the-fly depending on message destinations located in distinct administrative domains. It supports multiple dynamic overlay networks based on message groups, dynamic discovery of nodes and automatic setup of overlay networks among nodes with no server-side configuration. I designed and implemented platform connectors to integrate the framework as the federation module of Message Oriented Middleware and Key Value Store platforms, which are among the most widespread paradigms supporting data sharing in distributed systems

A security analysis of email communications

The objective of this report is to analyse the security and privacy risks of email communications and identify technical countermeasures capable of mitigating them effectively. In order to do so, the report analyses from a technical point of view the core set of communication protocols and standards that support email communications in order to identify and understand the existing security and privacy vulnerabilities. On the basis of this analysis, the report identifies and analyses technical countermeasures, in the form of newer standards, protocols and tools, aimed at ensuring a better protection of the security and privacy of email communications. The practical implementation of each countermeasure is evaluated in order to understand its limitations and identify potential technical and organisational constrains that could limit its effectiveness in practice. The outcome of the above mentioned analysis is a set of recommendations regarding technical and organisational measures that when combined properly have the potential of more effectively mitigating the privacy and security risks of today's email communications.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

An Innovative System To Monitor E-Mail Systems Environments Using Active Monitoring

Sehingga kini, Sistem E-mail amat penting dalam memenuhi setiap keperluan dalam pelbagai bidang kehidupan seperti pendidikan, perdagangan, pemasaran, komersial and pelbagai bidang perniagaan termasuk komunikasi peribadi melalui Internet. In recent times, E-mail systems are essential in fulfilling all correspondences in various fields of our lives such as the education, trading, marketing, commerce and other businesses as well as personal communications via the Internetet

Message routing between the As/400 token ring network and the Internet

A working model of the message exchange system is designed and developed for the AS/400 systems, a type of mid-range computer developed by IBM, thus enabling the Message Routing between the AS/400 Token Ring Network and the Internet. The routing system accommodates the in-built messaging function in the midrange computer, hence providing a common familiar interface to the user. The message system typically includes a router and an intermediate host system connected to a computer which provides the access to the Internet (technically referred as Internet Gateway). The router becomes the bridging unit between the Internet and the midrange host. The router uses two different protocols to communicate with the midrange host and the Internet. However the message exchanges are never affected by these differences in the protocol, since they are accomplished at a higher level of communication

Application of Web Services to a Simulation Framework

The Joint Semi-Automated Forces (JSAF) simulator is an excellent tool for military training and a great testbed for new SAF behaviors. However, it has the drawback that behaviors must be ported into its own Finite State Machine (FSM) language. Web Services is a growing technology that seamlessly connects service providers to service consumers. This work attempts to merge these two technologies by modeling SAF behaviors as web services. The JSAF simulator is then modeled as a web service consumer. This approach allows new Semi-Automated Forces (SAF) behaviors to be developed independently of the simulator, which provides the developer with greater flexibility when choosing a programming language, development environment, and development platform. In addition to new SAF behaviors, this approach also supports any external component that can be modeled as a web service. Furthermore, these services are often run over a network, which distributes the computational load across several computers. Finally, hosting copies of a single service on several machines, a concept similar to file-sharing mirrors, offers an environment for load-balancing. This means if several entities are running the same behavior, a single server does not perform the computation for every entity. Instead, each entity is assigned to a specific server, increasing the quality of service seen by the system. A Web Services framework linking JSAF with several services is designed and implemented. Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) behaviors written in MATLAB and a behavior recognition system are integrated with JSAF. These behaviors and the recognition tool were developed by other researchers, independent of this work. Results show that offloading computation to other machines is beneficial, especially when the simulation system is under heavy load. Preliminary results also indicate that load-balancing performs much better than using a single server

Affordable Dial-up PPP Internet Connection for School Classroom Local Area Networks

A software package is presented that provides a simple and low cost solution for schools to connect their classroom Local Area Networks (LAN) to Internet and to use Internet services. The main component of the package is NOS4S (NOS for Schools), a DOS program based on JNOS with some substantial extensions necessary for the intended use. Besides acting as an on-demand TCP/IP router over dial-up Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or ISDN lines, the program also serves as a local e-mail (on-demand SMTP / POP3), FTP and WWW server. Although relatively low cost commercial routers for connecting an LAN to Internet can be found on the market, it is generally difficult for schools to afford them due to their limited financial resources. In contrast, the NOS4S solution is essentially free. On the one hand, NOS4S is publicly available and free. On the other hand, because the classroom computers must be periodically replaced with newer ones to be able to run current versions of MS Windows, some older and abandoned computer suitable to run NOS4S can usually be found in a school