Introduction - Project Description

"Giving external or internal clients direct access to existing applications isn't always practical, secure, or flexible. Instead, it iss often better to provide Web Service wrapper around existing applications. Such wrappers let you safely expose existing systems to both internal and external customers and can work with a variety of communication methods via configurable protocols."

On the other hand, Genesereth and Ketchpel pointed [2] that software agents can be used as wrappers for legacy software to support interoperability in heteregenous environment.

Finally, wrappers as design pattern in software engineery are used to extend functionality of the objects they wrap, as in example of Observer or Adaptor patterns.

The aim of the project would be creating Web Service wrapper and agent-based wrapper for the same application and comparing what different addiional functionality could
(a) agent and
(b) Web Service bring to the wrapped application.