The building blocks of a workflow are the agents that provide different logical functionality. The design of the workflow/agent model enables development of small, specialized agents, that when combined with other agents in a workflow provide comprehensive mediation functionality. Benefits of this approach include the ability to rapidly develop additional agents that complement existing agents, with minimal side effects.
Agents can also be identified as interface (collection and forwarding) or processing agents, where interface agents are used to integrate MediationZone with external systems. They implement the protocols used for exchange of data and control information. MediationZone provides a wide range of interface agents for use with standardized and vendor-specific protocols. For a list of interface agents, see Appendix A - MediationZone Interfaces.
All agents in MediationZone, standard as well as custom, are developed using the same development toolkit, see /wiki/spaces/MD82/pages/3805906. High-level APIs provide a clear separation between the workflow runtime environment and agent functionality. Standard and 3rd party developed custom agents may thus be blended seamlessly in workflows.
Overview of agent categories