An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information Sources Michael Christoffel Institute for Program Structures and Data Organization, University of Karlsruhe, Germany Workshop on Web Information Systems Modeling, Riga, Latvia 2004 June 8

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Overview Information Integration Open Market Model Integration Architecture Realization Conclusion

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Overview Information Integration Open Market Model Integration Architecture Realization Conclusion

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Value of Information Information has become a valuable good More and more services available through the Internet –traditional libraries –booksellers –publishing houses –new kinds of services Commercialization of the Internet

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Information Overload Information is distributed –large number of computers and databases Information providers –are independent from each other Customer has to –find, compare, access, purchase, transform, combine,... –sequentially

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Idea of Information Integration Provide a uniform access to all information sources Hide the heterogeneity and distribution of the different sources Keep independence of individual services Integration

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Overview Information Integration Open Market Model Integration Architecture Realization Conclusion

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Idea of an Open Market Model of an open market Customers and providers –may appear and leave at any time –communicate through interfaces that are adapted to their needs Internals of the market are hidden Market

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Market Agents Market is inhabited by market agents –can come and go –independent acting –communicative –no definite relations –agents have to learn how to cope with their environment –different agents types –can have external interfaces

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Advantages Scalable and extensible –new agents at runtime –new agent types at runtime –by different organizations Interface agents –adaptable to customers –tailored to providers

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Advantages Communication is based on Web services –no additional middleware –independent from operating systems and hardware platform Increased robustness by redundancies Secure transmission –encryption –digital signatures

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Overview Information Integration Open Market Model Integration Architecture Realization Conclusion

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Architecture Overview Application of the open market model 15 different agent types implemented until now

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Provider Support Provider Agent –interface of the provider to the system –at least one provider agent for each provider –access control –query pre-processing –query optimization –uses existing interfaces of the provider

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Provider Support Provider Agents for Web Interfaces –provider agent can be adapted by a source description –identifying search form and search parameters –extracting data elements from result pages –path expressions and regular expressions –(semi-)automatic generation

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Provider Support Provider Agents for Web Interfaces –provider agent can be adapted by a source description –identifying search form and search parameters –extraction data elements from result pages –path expressions and regular expressions –(semi-)automatic generation

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Result Integration Integration Agent –parallel execution of queries –dynamic integration of results to final result list –incremental process –automatic grouping –duplicate elimination

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Provider Selection Provider Selection Agent –hold metadata on available provider –find appropriate providers for a customer demand

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Customer Support Customer Agent –represent the interests of the customers –one customer agent for several customers –adapted to individual customers or customer groups –provide personal workspace

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Customer Support Personal Workspace –individual for each customer –will be preserved during two sessions –agenda –past queries and results –virtual hand library –annotations –get in contact with other customers –exchange documents with other customers

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Customer Support Customer Interface Agent –interface of the customers to the system –supports favorite look and feel of a customer –supports different languages (configurable) –can use different customer agents –can be adapted to different visual interfaces

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Customer Interface Agent –interface of the customers to the system –supports favorite look and feel of a customer –supports different languages (configurable) –can use different customer agents –can be adapted to different visual interfaces Customer Support

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Customer Interface Agent –interface of the customers to the system –supports favorite look and feel of a customer –supports different languages (configurable) –can use different customer agents –can be adapted to different visual interfaces Customer Support

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Other Agent Types Customer Organization A. Customer Authentication A. Agent Authentication A. Billing Agent Payment Agent Generator Agent Billboard Agent Agent/Group Naming A. System Administration A.

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Agent Groups Examples: –parallel result integration –extended search space for Provider Selection Agents –moving/copying customer profiles –coordination of source description generation process –handling backup and redundancies

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Overview Information Integration Open Market Model Integration Architecture Realization Conclusion

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Agent Communities Agent communities hold one or more agents –agents share resources –agents can migrate from one community to another Communication among communities –based on Web services –choice between regular and secure transmission External Communication Communication Module Administration Module Agent Container Web Service Interface Secure Communication Security Module

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Agent Communities Four ways of message interchange –agent –group –community –system External Communication Communication Module Administration Module Agent Container Web Service Interface Secure Communication Security Module

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Agent Communities Four ways of message interchange –agent –group –community –system Control panel –access to all agents in the community

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Task Execution Contexts –can contain several messages –can be used by more than one agent Work objects –save the messages of an active context –can be deleted when they are no longer used –are stored in the work queue Work Queue Work Object Message Object Context

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Overview Information Integration Open Market Model Integration Architecture Realization Conclusion

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Project Background The presented work –is part of the interdisciplinary research project ModernMart Project team –department of computer science –department of business administration and economics –university library

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Project Background The ModernMart project –is part of the German national research initiative in Digital Libraries “Distributed Processing and Delivery of Digital Documents” (V 3 D 2 ) –is supported by German Research Foundation (DFG)

Michael Christoffel: An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information SourcesWISM 2004 Summary Integration of services in the scientific literature domain –hide heterogeneity and distribution –provide uniform access to the whole collection –keep the independence of existing information providers Model of the open market Integration architecture as an implementation of the market model –various agent types Concept of agent communities –sharing resources –communication is based on Web services

An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information Sources Michael Christoffel Institute for Program Structures and Data Organization, University of Karlsruhe, Germany The End