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The whole hybrid ITS architecture

21 January, 2016 - 14:46

The whole hybrid architecture is given in Figure 12.13 that shows components implementing all four modules. Additionally, interactions among components of different modules are shown. Only agents of the architecture’s higher level interact to components of other modules. So, interfaces with other modules are implemented in one or a few agents of each module. The hybrid architecture is open in the similar sense to both above described architectures. Some kinds of new functionality can be added to the system by adding new lower level components and without changing existing components. The most common changes are additions of new types of materials (e.g., audio materials) and new types of problems (e.g., course specific tasks). New type of materials usually needs corresponding functionality like audio streaming to be implemented. New types of problems need the corresponding problem generation, problem solving and knowledge evaluation functionality. To enable easy addition of such functionality the architecture specifies open sets of lower level components corresponding to the functionality that varies from type to type of materials and problems. Open sets are denoted by double boxes in the Figure 12.13. New components may be added to these sets at any time.

Thus the hybrid architecture preserves the main strengths of the above described service oriented and multi-agent architectures, namely, high modularity and openness for new components. Moreover, it adds significant advantage by implementing each component in suitable technology. The logical layer with all intelligent mechanisms is realized by intelligent agents, while reactive components without any proactive or intelligent actions are realized using simpler technology – services. It removes the main drawbacks of both homogenous architectures. Neither simple components without any intelligent behaviour are implemented as agents, nor are the intelligent mechanisms developed from scratch in the services.

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Figure 12.13 The hybrid ITS architecture