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The technology of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems shows great potential for dealing with a range of difficult software engineering problems. But if this potential is to be realised, then serious attention must be given to engineering approaches to building agent systems. This purpose of this paper is to direct attention at these issues. It considers how we might specify, implement, and...
This paper will present the author's view of a Cooperating Knowledge Based System (CKBS) as an applied multi-agent system with a database perspective, based on well-defined computer-science concepts, rather than AI concepts. Each agent will be seen as an autonomous (necessarily large-grain) system which implicitly cooperates with other agents to achieve a global goal in a potentially multi-user environment,...
Extracting informations from multiple sources, highly heterogeneous, of textual data and integrating them in order to provide true information is a challenging research topic in the database area. In order to illustrate problems and solutions, one of the most interesting projects facing this problem, TSIMMIS, is presented. Furthermore, a Description Logics approach, able to provide interesting solutions...
Case Retrieval Nets (CRNs) have been developed for the fast and flexible retrieval of previous cases (“experiences”) from large case bases. They permit the ranking of stored information according to their similarity to a query. As an effective flexible information gathering technique they are appropriate for building information agents working over inhomogeneous data bases, too. CRNs...
The paper presents an information architecture consisting of the information interface, management and gathering layers. Intelligent active services are discussed for each layer, access scenarios are presented, and the role of knowledge rovers is discussed. Knowledge rovers represent a family of cooperating intelligent agents that may be configured to support enterprise tasks, scenarios, and decision-makers...
CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is an interoperability standard for middleware in distributed object management systems which has resulted from the efforts of one of the largest computer industry consortia ever formed (the Object Management Group). CORBA defines client/server middleware in which objects are uniformly used for letting existing applications discover each other, interoperate,...
Intelligent agents are software components with a largely autonomous behaviour, that are fitted out with a considerable degree of artificial intelligence. They are a promising paradigm to serve as a foundation for future computing environments in general, and information systems in particular. At the same time database research has seen the rise of active databases, database systems that add autonomous...
This paper critically analyse the use of active databases as an enabling technology for result sharing as defined in the DAI literature. In particular, we demostrate how ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules can be used for supporting result shared cooperation. Further, we demonstrate how composite events as defined within active databases can help a problem solving agent to precisely specify when to...
Heterogeneous Distributed Database Management Systems (HDDBMS) involve the interoperability of data sources. One approach to achieve this type of integration is to build interfaces between the different databases being integrated. This approach holds, for a particular case, at a specific point in time. In this case however, the database structures need to be adapted. Such adaptation is not advisable...
A system for developing and executing reactive, autonomous, rule-based agents is presented. The rules consist of sentences of a temporal logic connecting the present and past history of the system to its future states, and are interpreted at run time. The design and the implementation of the system are illustrated, along with some experimental performance measures derived in a real-time setting, where...
A neural fuzzy system can help learn an agent profile of a user. The fuzzy system uses if-then rules to store and compress the agent's knowledge of the user's likes and dislikes. A neural system uses training data to form and tune the rules. The profile is a preference map or a bumpy utility surface over the space of search objects. Rules define fuzzy patches that cover the bumps as learning unfolds...
The rapid growth of public information systems, e.g. UseNet or World-Wide-Web, increases the need for tools filtering the information. A significant problem in many information filtering agents is that the user is forced to define his interests explicitly. This task is unacceptable for most users. Approaches which automatically generate interest profiles suffer from the disadvantage that the profiles...
We have been developing a methodology and system for autonomous knowledge discovery and data mining from global information sources. The key issue is how to increase both autonomy and versatility of our discovery system. Our methodology is to create an organized society of autonomous knowledge discovery agents. This means (1) to develop many kinds of knowledge discovery and data mining agents (KDD...
Research in Information Systems has switched its focus from data to communication. Communication between different autonomous ISs requires a certain amount of intelligence of each system. The system should be able to know which queries it can/may handle and also be able to negotiate about the information that it will give. In short, these systems evolve into what is called Cooperative Information...
The Virtual Secretary 2 project (ViSe2) focuses on the construction of a multi-agent cooperation system. As a research vehicle, we have chosen to build intelligent agents that perform secretarial tasks for their users either by themselves or via cooperation. An individual ViSe2 agent has limited knowledge and problem-solving capabilities. To act better for its user, the agent interacts with other...
Research activities in multiagent systems (MAS) continue to gain momentum. Implemented systems are also becoming more visible. The problem, however, is that these systems can operate only in their own environment and utilize their own knowledge bases. A framework design is developed whereby heterogenous multiagent systems can interoperate through an environment that enables their respective agents...
This paper introduces a new way of describing ontologies used in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) which is intended as a means to allow interoperability of MAS. It is inspired by a pragmatic theory of intensionality worked out as part of an anthropological approach to agent migration. An agent observing an unfamiliar society of agents can ascribe such an ontology to that MAS by interviewing those agents,...
The paper introduces the concept of software agent-oriented frameworks for the design and the development of interoperable environments. Interoperability is a process that allows cooperative interactions between several systems. These latter are distributed on networks and can present incompatibilities in different ways (material, software, terminology). As a solution, we suggest to develop multiagent...
We propose an agent architecture that provides transparent access to a set of distributed, heterogeneous, and autonomous information sources. Our objectives are twofold: First, we want to support quick development of mediators by automatically deriving mediator specifications which are subsequently fed to a mediator generator. Second, we wish to supply the user with a relatively simple model of the...
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