This volume contains the proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Agent Systems and Applications / Fourth International Symposium on Mobile Agents (ETH Zurich, September 2000).
In the age of information overload, agents have become an important programming paradigm. Agents can act on behalf of users to collect, filter, and process information. They can act autonomously and react to changing environments. Agents are deployed in different settings, such as industrial control, Internet searching, personal assistance, network management, games, and many others.
In our increasingly networked world, mobile code is another important programming paradigm. In distributed applications mobile code can improve speed, flexibility, structure, security, or ability to handle disconnection. Mobile code has been applied to mobile computing, wireless networks, active networks, manufacturing, network management, resource discovery, software dissemination and configuration, and many other situations.
Mobile agents combine the features of agents and of mobile-code technologies, and present their own set of challenges. Their use is increasingly explored by an expanding industry. A full understanding of the capabilities and limits of these technologies is an open research topic in several communities.
The 20 papers contained in this volume showcase experimental research as well as experiences gained while developing, deploying, and using agent applications and systems that meet real user needs:
In addition to the papers contained in these proceedings, the symposium program included invited presentations, tutorials, and a poster session. More information on the symposium my be found at http://www.inf.ethz.ch/ASA-MA/