ISBN: 3-540-65112-8
TITLE: Intelligent Information Agents
AUTHOR: Klusch, Matthias (Ed.)
TOC:

Part I. Cooperative Information Systems and Agents 
Introduction 3 
1. From Business Processes to Cooperative Information 
Systems: An Information Agents Perspective 
Michael P. Papazoglou and Willem-Jan van den Heuvel 10 
1.1 Introduction 10 
1.2 The Enterprise Framework 12 
1.3 The Business Support Facilities 13 
1.4 The Advanced Middleware Infrastructure 27 
1.5 Concluding Remarks 35 
2. Social Abstractions for Information Agents 
Munindar P. Singh and Michael N. Huhns 37 
2.1 Introduction 37 
2.2 Key Concepts 38 
2.3 Social Abstractions 42 
2.4 Commitments for Interoperation 44 
2.5 Applications 47 
2.6 Conclusions and Future Work 51 
3. Integration of Information from Multiple Sources of 
Textual Data 
Sonia Bergamaschi and Domenico Beneventano 53 
3.1 Introduction 53 
3.2 The TSIMMIS Project 56 
3.3 The MOMIS Project 65 
3.4 Discussion and Final Remarks 76 
4. In-Context Information Management through Adaptive 
Collaboration of Intelligent Agents 
Katia Sycara 78 
4.1 Introduction 78 
4.2 Brief Overview of RETSINA 80 
4.3 Automated Information Context Refinement by an Interface 
Agent 86 
4.4 Learning of Information Retrieval Context 90 
4.5 Explicit Context Representation in Task Schemas 91 
4.6 Conclusion and Future Research 99 
5. A Framework for a Scalable Agent Architecture of 
Cooperating Heterogeneous Knowledge Sources 
Aris Ouksel 100 
5.1 Introduction and Objectives 100 
5.2 A Conceptual Framework for SCOPES 102 
5.3 Current State of Knowledge in Semantic Interoperability 107 
5.4 Semantic Interoperability in SCOPES 112 
5.5 Conclusion and Extensions to SCOPES 121 
Part II. Rational Information Agents and Electronic Commerce 
Introduction 127 
6. Agents as Mediators in Electronic Commerce 
Robert Guttman, Alexandros Moukas, and Pattie Maes 131 
6.1 Introduction 131 
6.2 Roles of Agents as Mediators in Electronic Commerce 132 
6.3 Agent Technologies for Electronic Commerce 142 
6.4 AmEC at the MIT Media Laboratory 149 
6.5 Conclusion and Future Directions 152 
7. Auctions and Multi-agent Systems 
Pablo Noriega and Carles Sierra 153 
7.1 Introduction 153 
7.2 The Fishmarket 156 
7.3 Towards a Formal Model 168 
7.4 Institutions 172 
7.5 Closing Remarks 173 
8. Strategic Reasoning and Adaptation in an Information 
Economy 
Edmund H. Durfee, Tracy Mullen, Sunju Park, Jos M. Vidal, 
and Peter Weinstein 176 
8.1 Introduction 176 
8.2 The Service Market Society 180 
8.3 The UMDL Ontology 183 
8.4 The UMDL Auctions 185 
8.5 Simple Market Scenario - Price Takers 186 
8.6 Strategic Agents 189 
8.7 Learning Agents 193 
8.8 System-Wide Adaptation 197 
8.9 Conclusion 202 
9. SharedPlans in Electronic Commerce 
Merav Hadad and Sarit Kraus 204 
9.1 Introduction 204 
9.2 The SharedPlan Model 206 
9.3 The Benefits of Using SharedPlans in Electronic Commerce 212 
9.4 The General SharedPlan System 217 
9.5 Conclusion 230 
10. Dynamic Supply Chain Structuring for Electronic 
Commerce Among Agents 
Daniel Dajun Zeng and Katia Sycara 232 
10.1 Introduction 232 
10.2 The LCT Supply Chain Model 235 
10.3 LCT in Inventory Models with Constant Demand Rates 237 
10.4 LCT in Periodic Review Stochastic Inventory Model 238 
10.5 Computing Inventory Policies with Multiple Leadtime 
Options 244 
10.6 Concluding Remarks 248 
Part III. Adaptive Information Agents 
Introduction 253 
11. Adaptive Choice of Information Sources 
Sandip Sen, Anish Biswas, and Sumit Ghosh 258 
11.1 Introduction 258 
11.2 A Categorization of Approaches to Developing Adaptive 
Information Agents 260 
11.3 A State-Based Approach to Load Balancing 261 
11.4 A Model-Based Approach to Load Balancing 270 
11.5 Learning to Select Information Sources 274 
11.6 Observations 277 
12. Personal Assistants for the Web: A MIT Perspective 
Henry Lieberman 279 
12.1 Introduction 279 
12.2 Intelligent Information Agents Can Break the Knowledge 
Bottleneck 280 
12.3 Intelligent Information Agents and Conventional Information 
Retrieval 281 
12.4 From Information Retrieval to Information Reconnaissance 282 
12.5 Information Agents Can Help People Find Common Interests 285 
12.6 Information Agents as Matchmakers 287 
12.7 Agents for Electronic Commerce 289 
12.8 Agents for Visualization of Information Spaces 291 
12.9 Information Agents Can Be Controversial 292 
13. Amalthaea and Histos: MultiAgent Systems for WWW 
Sites and Reputation Recommendations 
Alexandros Moukas, Giorgos Zacharia, and Pattie Maes 293 
13.1 Introduction 293 
13.2 Background and Related Work 295 
13.3 Amalthaea 299 
13.4 Histos 314 
13.5 Conclusion and Future Work 321 
14. Scalable Web Search by Adaptive Online Agents: An 
InfoSpiders Case Study 
Filippo Menczer and Alvaro E. Monge 323 
14.1 Introduction 323 
14.2 Search Engines and Agents 325 
14.3 Scalability 327 
14.4 InfoSpiders 329 
14.5 Case Study 337 
14.6 Discussion 340 
Part IV. Mobile Information Agents and Security 
Introduction 351 
15. Mobile Agents for Distributed Information Retrieval 
Brian Brewington, Robert Gray, Katsuhiro Moizumi, David Kotz, 
George Cybenko, and Daniela Rus 355 
15.1 Introduction 355 
15.2 Motivation 357 
15.3 Survey of Mobile-Agent Systems 360 
15.4 Application: The Technical-Report Searcher 367 
15.5 Planning 377 
15.6 Conclusion 394 
16. On Coordinating Information Agents and Mobility 
Robert Tolksdorf 396 
16.1 Introduction 396 
16.2 Coordination and Mobility in Information Systems 396 
16.3 Software Engineering for Multi Agent Systems 400 
16.4 A Coordination Language for Mobility 403 
16.5 Simple Coordination Patterns 406 
16.6 Related Work and Conclusion 411 
17. Spawning Information Agents on the Web 
Onn Shehory 412 
17.1 Introduction 412 
17.2 Why Is Spawning Necessary? 415 
17.3 Requirements for Spawning 418 
17.4 The Algorithm 420 
17.5 Simulation: The Cloning Case 424 
17.6 Spawning: Information Requirements Analysis 427 
17.7 Related Work 428 
17.8 Conclusion 430 
18. Mobile Agent Security 
Christian F. Tschudin 431 
18.1 Motivation 431 
18.2 Is Code Mobility Dangerous? 431 
18.3 Protecting the Host 433 
18.4 RunTime Checks and How To Avoid (Some of) Them 434 
18.5 Authentication, Authorization, Allocation 434 
18.6 Protecting the Mobile Agents 436 
18.7 Detecting Agent Tampering 437 
18.8 Preventing Agent Tampering 439 
18.9 Secure or Open, Is This the Question? 443 
18.10 Outlook 444 
References 447 
About the Authors 485 
List of Contributors 495 
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