Frequently Asked Questions

Questions

What is the Agent Gateway good for?
I have a running agent. How can I expose this agent as a web service?
How is the Agent Gateway connected to the target agent platform?
Is it necessary to have an access to a UDDI registry?
Why is there a Whitestein Technologies logo on the Gateway GUI console?
How can I contribute to the WSAI project?

Answers

What is the Agent Gateway good for?
Suppose there is an agent which provides some useful agent service. It would be nice to have this agent service available also as a web service. The Web Service Agent Gateway (WSAG) will provide a Web Service interface to this agent service, so that Web Service clients can access and use the agent service without knowing that they are using an agent service.

I have a running agent. How can I expose this agent as a web service?
At first you have to create a Gateway Agent. Then you have to install it into the Agent Gateway and deploy it as a web service for desired agent. For information about creation and deployment of a Gateway Agent read the documentation.

How is the Agent Gateway connected to the target agent platform?
The Agent Gateway is not permanently connected to any target platform. The communication with the target platform uses the HTTP Message Transport Protocol (MTP). The (HTTP) connection is established only when the web service for a particular agent running in this platform is invoked. In order to send a message to the Target Agent the agent platform must support the HTTP Message Transport Protocol (MTP). For information how to start the JADE container with the HTTP MTP read the JADE documentation.

Is it necessary to have access to a UDDI registry?
No, it is not necessary to have access to a UDDI registry. The UDDI registry serves as Yellow Pages for web services. The potential users can find your service there. If you don't want to make your web service public, you don't have to register it into a UDDI registry.

Why is there a Whitestein Technologies logo on the Gateway GUI console?
The original developers and initiators ofthe Gateway are from Whitestein Technologies. The GUI in the default version is only an example. The looks of the GUI can easily be changed as we used a MVC framework named Struts to build the GUI.

How can I contribute to the WSAI project?
There are several ways to contribute to the WSAI project. Here are only a few possibilities:

Implement the features listed in the section future work.
Implement own ideas/feature requests.
Use the Gateway and send the feedback to the mailing list or to wsai at whitestein.com.
Enhance the documentation.

Last update: August 22, 2003