Most large-scale software applications will be built by integrating individual software systems into a coherent whole. For these applications to become economically viable and widely used, it must be possible to easily and affordably: incorporate legacy software systems into the application; reuse new software systems created for one application in related applications; automatically determine (learn and implement) appropriate communication and control strategies, given the software systems being integrated; automatically manage the differences that inevitably arise because of differences in representation, assumptions, and knowledge present in the independently developed systems. Blackboard Technology Group, Inc. proposes to develop and demonstrate a prototype agent-based framework for economically integrating legacy and reusable software systems to form large-scale applications. This framework will simplify agent-based encapsulation of existing software systems, facilitate the development of reusable component systems, and automatically determine appropriate interaction strategies for a given set of components used in an application.
