enflexit/agentworkbench

Application toolkit based on the JADE framework. Functionalities for time aspects, agent environment interaction, visualization and load balancing, focusing on the usability for end users.

Agent.Workbench

The documentaton is also available in our not yet comprehensive GitBook

Agent.Workbench is an Eclipse / OSGI based application toolkit and framework that utilizes the agent platform JADE. It enables to develop agent-based, end-user oriented RCP applications that should finally enable non-programmers to use agent technologies for their own purposes.

Why did we start developing such a tool? First reason is that JADE is probably the most sophisticated, JAVA-based agent platform. It is widlly used in academia and compliant to the IEEE / FIPA specifications. Since JADE was designed as middleware, the developer (Telecom Italia S.p.A. and other) especially focused on the actual core of the framework - agents and their interaction with their environment (which includes other agents and thus agent communication). In turn, that means that - despite of some administrative tools - no effort was spent to address end-user needs, which is the second reason why we started developing Agent.Workbench several years ago.

Instead of starting an agent system from command line or to start developing an agent-based application from the scratch, we believe that efforts should be reduced.

History

The project was formally known as "Agent.GUI", it was moved from Sourceforge July 2017.

agentworkbench's Issues

Checke required JRE of OSGI bundles

When you import Projects via Repository-import ClassNotFound- and BundleExceptions occure.

Observer-Pattern

In J11 the previously provided Observer-Pattern is deprecated and will be removed in future Java releases

Move into own bundle: Bundle "de.enflexit.common" (never touch a running system) and adjust corresponding usage in AWB

The value of the local variable oldList is not used

KeyEvent.getModifiers()

=> is deprecated since version 9
If Problem with getModifersEx see this link

Resolve Java API-Doc errors & warning during build process

Adjust build process on EnFlex.IT build server

New Release:

Adjust version numbers in

• Bundles,
• Feature,
• Target Platform,
• Produkt
• Update-Site

• POM-Files

Class.newInstance()

=> deprecated since J9
Substitute its corresponding usage

The import ... is never used

undefined path in javadoc search

Check for running Java JRE's that can be recommended by us!

E.g. provide an own JRE for AWB with justj (see https://www.eclipse.org/justj/) or use a ready made JRE's and its installer (see https://adoptopenjdk.net/)

Adjust Tycho build to latest Tycho version.

=> see https://wiki.eclipse.org/Tycho/Release_Notes

Error when starting

After extracting the archive and starting the .exe-file a error occurs:

Extraction failure

AgentWorkbench not starting after update

Sometimes after installing Agent.Workbench updates, the application fails to start. The log file says the bundle org.agentgui.core cannot be resolved due to constraint violations, "because it is exposed ... via two dependency chains" - full log file attached. The problem only occurs when updating from an older version though, when using a clean new install the new version works without any problems.

Add serialVersionUID = 1L to all serializable classes (see Warnings)