ActiveEdge Basics

Active Edge is a next-generation Java-based development and deployment platform, similar to J2EE, but designed built around a highly distributed multi-agent architecture we call the Cognitive Grid. The Cognitive Grid is a revolutionary philosophy, design methodology and technology that fuses many trends in business and technology thinking. We treat the business as a system and our software is designed to mirror that system.

• Our philosophy turns decades of advanced thinking and research about how to design distributed systems into practical business. We make practical decades of advanced research into complex highly distributed intelligent systems to solve the hardest business problems.

• Our methodology delivers reliable applications despite the complexity of distributed applications. It makes practical this philosophy with design, development, testing, integration and deployment processes and techniques that support realization of intelligent distributed systems that support the Cognitive Grid philosophy.

• Our technology provided the platform to makes intelligent distributed applications practical in the same way that J2EE servers made Enterprise JAVA practical. The Cognitive Grid is comprised of three emerging area components: Intelligent Agents, Grid Computing and the Semantic Web, each of which supports and influences the philosophy and methodologies.

What is an Agent?

Intelligent agents represent the next leap forward for network computing systems. At Cougaar Software, we build our cutting edge applications on a distributed, intelligent agent framework. But, what exactly is an agent? The definition of “agent” is widely debated in the research community today. For Cougaar Software, the discussion presented by Jeff Bradshaw in the introduction to the book, Software Agents, is the most appropriate. It states that an agent is...

"... a software entity which functions continuously and autonomously in a particular environment … able to carry out activities in a flexible and intelligent manner that is responsive to changes in the environment ... Ideally, an agent that functions continuously in an environment over a long period of time would be able to learn from its experience ... an agent that inhabits an environment with other agents and processes to be able to communicate and cooperate with them ... perhaps move from place to place in doing so."

In general, agents must be autonomous, able to execute without user intervention. They must be able to communicate with other software or human agents and to perceive the environment in which they reside.

What Makes an Agent 'Intelligent'?

Any software that behaves in an agent-like manner and exhibits one or more of the characteristics identified in the definition in the previous section is considered an agent. “Intelligence” in agents adds a more realistic, dynamic dimension to the characteristics of software agents.

To be intelligent, agents must be able to work together on solving problems in a dynamic environment and must be able to communicate understandable results back to the user. Intelligent agents must be proactive and able to react to changing situations. Emulating more realistic behavior in day-to-day operations, intelligent agents can do much more than just match situational patterns or apply a static set of rules to solve a problem.