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TUTORIAL I
Designing Distributed Applications using Mobile Agents
Sridhar Iyer and Vikram Jamwal
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

Audience: This tutorial is intended for software architects, researchers, educators, and graduate students interested in building background in the area of mobile agents.

Course Description: This tutorial begins with exploring the need for new approaches to soft-ware design and introduces the basic concepts in the mobile agent technology. The tradeoffs in using a mobile agents based approach for designing distributed applications are discussed in detail.

Subsequently, issues in designing mobile agents frameworks are discussed, with a comparison of some popular frameworks such as Voyager, Aglets, and Concordia. This is followed by case studies of mobile agents based distributed applications, in domains such as e-commerce, workflow and distance education. The tutorial concludes with highlighting some open research issues in the area.

Lecturers: Sridhar Iyer is presently an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Technology at IIT, Bombay. Prior to this, he has been a faculty member in the Dept. of Computer Science & Engg. at IIT, Guwahati. He received his B. Tech, M. Tech, and Ph. D. from the Dept. of Computer Science & Engg. at IIT, Bombay. His current research interests include: mobile agents, ad hoc networking, and analysis of distributed programs.

Vikram Jamwal is presently a Ph. D. student in the School of Information Technology at IIT, Bombay. He received his M. Tech from IIT, Bombay. Prior to this, he has worked as a visiting scientist at the National Centre for Software Technology and as a Design Executive at Crompton Greaves Ltd. His current research interests include: mobile agents, design of large-scale distributed applications and distance education.