International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering

Abstract

Large-scale networked environments, such as the Internet, possess the characteristics of distributed data, distributed access and distributed control; this gives the user a powerful mechanism for building and integrating large repositories of distributed information from diverse resources set. However, a distributed network system with mobile agent deployment development for a hospital information systems or a health care information portal is still in its infancy. The currently available tools are software-based or Web-based. Software-based tools must be installed on each computer prior to using the tool. For the use of Web-based tools, access to the Internet is required. The shortcomings of the currently available tools have made the use of mobile devices more appealing. In mobile computing, the issues such as low bandwidth, high latency wireless networks, loss or degradation of wireless connections, and network errors or failures need to be dealt with. Other issues to be addressed include system adaptability, reliability, robustness, extensibility, flexibility, and maintainability. Mobile agent approach has emerged as the most viable approach for development of intelligent software applications for wireless mobile devices in a distributed environment. We have developed a demonstration prototype using Java-based agent technologies and Java-based mobile technologies. In this paper, we present the architecture and the demonstration prototype, and discuss the approach, and future plans.