Agents VS OBjects

							MSIT-12-01                                                                  Qaiser Khan


                                Agent vs Objects
Agents are part of Agent-Oriented Programming which is an abstraction of Object
Oriented programming.

Agents belong to Artificial intelligence system, and objects are normal programming
entities.

Objects can only be invoked externally while agents can be invoked internally.

Objects can have unlimited number of states and agents have only a certain number of
states.

Objects can have unlimited number of response type and agents have limited set of
responses.

Agents work autonomously and objects work as part of a larger system.

Objects can have unlimited number of public methods and agents mostly have a single
(or small number) interface.

Objects are predictable and agents can give unpredictable results.

Agents can have a non-deterministic state, i.e. Agents can decide not to follow any action
for some message or situation.

Agents have higher degree of encapsulation and objects mostly have higher degree of
reusability.

Agents can interact among themselves in any dynamic order and objects interact among
themselves in a predefined order.

Agents have a formal language and set of rules to communicate among themselves.


References:
   1) James Odell, “Agents and Objects” 1999
   2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-oriented_programming