Comparing Service-Oriented Computing and Agent-Oriented Programming towards Integration

Service Oriented Computing (SOC) and Agent Oriented Programming (AOP) are two promising paradigms exploitedin the development of distributed systems. In fact, even if starting from different conceptual abstractions, both paradigms tryto face unpredictability and complexity in wide and open distributed scenarios. In this context, they exhibit both strengths andweaknesses. The aim of this paper is to propose a comparison between the two paradigms, performed with regard to some issuespeculiar of distributed systems that the two paradigms address: space decomposition, interactions among distributed components,reusability/customization, interoperability/heterogeneity and security. Of course the purpose of this paper is not to define the“best one”, rather the paper aims at providing developers with critical knowledge about the advantages and the limitations ofthe two paradigms. Finally, the need for a smart integration of the two paradigms is pointed out, which will lead to exploit theadvantages of both in a joint way. We briefly survey some proposals in this direction and report some considerations about them.