Heterogeneous Agent Systems A Review

The notion of software agents has been around for more than a decade. Since its beginning, the definition of agent, like the definition of intelligence, has been quite controversial and often provoked hot discussions. Questions such as the following normally come up in such arguments: What is an agent? Should a piece of software be categorized as an agent by looking at its behavioral characteristics or by the methodology using which it was produced? Is a printer daemon an agent?