JADE in a nutshell

JADE  (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework) is an open source platform for agent based applications implemented in the Java language. JADE is a software framework implemented in Java. JADE provides a middleware for the implementation of multi-agent systems and a set of graphical tools that support testing activities.

Besides the agent abstraction, JADE provides task execution and composition model, peer to peer agent communication based on the asynchronous message passing paradigm, a yellow pages service supporting publish subscribe discovery mechanism and many other advanced features that facilitates the development of a distributed system.

 A JADE-based system can be distributed across machines and the configuration can be controlled via a remote GUI. The configuration can be even changed at run-time by moving agents from one machine to another, as and when required.

See JADE website for a detailed JADE description: http://jade.tilab.com/

Source: http://jade.tilab.com/