The distributed nature of peer-to-peer networks offers a solid ground for the deployment of environments where multiple agents, managing several resources, can cooperate in pursuing common and individual goals while achieving good overall performance. In this article we present a survey of recent work on the integration of multi-agent systems and peer-to-peer computing for resource coordination (including discovery, composition and execution of resources) and we propose an approach for optimizing resource coordination through the use of efficient peer-to-peer search mechanisms relying upon a powerful semantic overlay network. We also present an approach for the dynamic development of the required semantic overlay network from a network of randomly-connected peers.

The research project CASCOM (Context-aware Business Application Service Coordination in Mobile Computing Environments) will implement, validate, and trial value-added support for business services for mobile workers and users across mobile and fixed networks. The vision of the CASCOM approach is that ubiquitous application services are flexibly coordinated and pervasively provided to the mobile users by intelligent agents in dynamically changing contexts of open, large-scale, pervasive environments.

Abstract. The need to add semantic information to web-accessible services has created a growing research activity in this area. Standard initiatives such as OWL-S and WSDL enable the automation of discovery, composition and execution of semantic web services, i.e. they create a Semantic Web, such that computer programs or agents can implement an open, reliable, large-scale dynamic network of Web Services. This paper presents the research on agent technology development for context-aware execution of semantic web services, more specifically, the development of the Service Execution Agent (SEA). SEA uses context information to adapt the semantic web services execution process to a specific situation, thus improving its effectiveness and providing a faster and better service to its clients. Preliminary results show that context-awareness (e.g., the introduction of context information) in a service execution environment can speed up the execution process, in spite of the overhead that it is introduced by the agents' communication and processing of context information.

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