Multi-Agent Oriented Policy-Based Management Mechanism

Interest in policy-based approaches to multi-agent and distributed systems has grown considerably in recent years because they allow the separation of the rules that govern the behavioural choices of a system from the functionality provided by that system. Policy-based management has been proposed in multi-agent systems to deal with coordination and security issues of multi-agent systems according to well-defined system guidelines. The use of policy-based management in areas such as security is particularly attractive. The introduction of new technologies and the use of the internet for providing services to customers, increase the security concerns associated with today's networked environments. The need is evident for policy-based management approaches where the support for dynamic adaptation of the behaviour of the managed system is achieved by using policies.Based on the policy-based management mechanism and autonomous intelligent agents, this thesis present a framework for whose aims is to define and store policies which are used to control the behaviors of agents. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, a tool has been developed that allows specifying policies and enforcing them dynamically to related agents.Finally, the thesis describes a multi-agent system for online auction system as a case study. In his system, auction terms and conditions are transformed into policies which will be used to manage and coordinate auction agents.