Agents never directly see the blackboard, but only the AgentTransport. Thus, the interaction of most agents and the blackboard are limited. Usually, all that the developer needs to know what to do with the blackboard is to learn how to start and stop it.
The simplest way to start a blackboard is via MicaRunner. Simply adding a blackboard tag to the runner XML configuration file will provide support for a blackboard running on the local machine.
The alternative is to start a blackboard manually from the command
line. For an SQL Blackboard with a XML-over-TCP transport, this is
simply done using the XMLOverTCPBlackboard
class:
% java unsw.cse.mica.blackboard.XMLOverTCPBlackboard
This starts a blackboard transport at port 8500 on the local host, with all the default settings. The default settings can be overridden using the following command-line parameters:
-port=PORT specifies an alterative port number to use
-micaHome=DIR specifies an alternative home directory for mica
-typePath=DIR specifies an alternative directory (relative to the micaHome directory) to search for type specification files
-dbPath=DIR specifies an alternative directory (relative to the micaHome directory) to use for the SQL database
-persistent=BOOLEAN specifies whether or not the blackboards should attempt to load stored mobs on entry or save them on exit.