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Title: Mandrake: Multiagent Systems as a Basis for Programming Fault-Tolerant Decentralized Applications
We define a decentralized software application as one that consists of autonomous agents that communicate through asynchronous messaging. Constructing a decentralized application involves designing agents as independent local computations that coordinate to realize the application’s requirements. Moreover, a decentralized application is susceptible to faults manifested as message loss, delay, and reordering. We contribute Mandrake, a programming model for decentralized applications that addresses these challenges. Specifically, we adopt the construct of an information protocol that specifies messaging between agents purely in causal terms and can be correctly enacted by agents in a shared-nothing environment over nothing more than unreliable, unordered transport. Mandrake facilitates (1) implementing protocol-compliant agents by introducing a programming model; (2) transforming fragile protocols into fault-tolerant ones with simple annotations; and (3) a declarative policy language that makes it easy to implement fault-tolerance in agents based on the capabilities in protocols. In obviating the reliance on reliability and ordering guarantees in the communication infrastructure, Mandrake achieves some of the goals of the founders of networked computing from the 1970s.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1908374
PAR ID:
10454929
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS
Volume:
22
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1218--1220
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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