SOAP message transport for the JADE agent platform

The Department of Disitributed Systems implemented an add-on for the Jade agent development framework which enables Jade platforms to communicate via SOAP messages instead of HTTP or IIOP. It uses Apache CXF for sending and receiving SOAP messages. The approach is simple; it encapsulates ACL envelope and payload into a SOAP message before sending it to the other Jade platform. There is no mapping of ACL envelope to SOAP headers, so SOAP headers remain free to be used as necessary by the hosting environment. It is easy to modify the conversion process of outgoing and incoming SOAP messages using CXF interceptors.

The add-on provides useful Web Service integration and interoperation features, such as:

• Agents can simply call Web Services (this is independent of agent messaging, and it is done synchronously).
• It is possible to send SOAP messages to agents inside a platform (if it knows the address of agent platform and the GUID of the agent). The addressed agent receives the message as a normal agent message.
• Agents can easily provide Web Services. When such a WS is called, an agent method is executed where the agent can provide the response.

This approach is hany in cases where agent communication needs to cross organizational boundaries or custom secure channels need to be set up for agent communication. For example, it can be used to connect two agent platforms running at separate companies and/or locations.