Intelligent Information Agents

I. Cooperative Information Systems and Agents.- 1. From Business Processes to Cooperative Information Systems: An Information Agents Perspective.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 The Enterprise Framework.- 1.3 The Business Support Facilities.- 1.4 The Advanced Middleware Infrastructure.- 1.5 Concluding Remarks.- 2. Social Abstractions for Information Agents.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Key Concepts.- 2.3 Social Abstractions.- 2.4 Commitments for Interoperation.- 2.5 Applications.- 2.6 Conclusions and Future Work.- 3. Integration of Information from Multiple Sources of Textual Data.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 The TSIMMIS Project.- 3.3 The MOMIS Project.- 3.4 Discussion and Final Remarks.- 4. In-Context Information Management through Adaptive Collaboration of Intelligent Agents.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Brief Overview of RETSINA.- 4.3 Automated Information Context Refinement by an Interface Agent.- 4.4 Learning of Information Retrieval Context.- 4.5 Explicit Context Representation in Task Schemas.- 4.6 Conclusion and Future Research.- 5. A Framework for a Scalable Agent Architecture of Cooperating Heterogeneous Knowledge Sources.- 5.1 Introduction and Objectives.- 5.2 A Conceptual Framework for SCOPES.- 5.3 Current State of Knowledge in Semantic Interoperability.- 5.4 Semantic Interoperability in SCOPES.- 5.5 Conclusion and Extensions to SCOPES.- II. Rational Information Agents and Electronic Commerce.- 6. Agents as Mediators in Electronic Commerce.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 Roles of Agents as Mediators in Electronic Commerce.- 6.3 Agent Technologies for Electronic Commerce.- 6.4 AmEC at the MIT Media Laboratory.- 6.5 Conclusion and Future Directions.- 7. Auctions and Multi-agent Systems.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 The Fishmarket.- 7.3 Towards a Formal Model.- 7.4 Institutions.- 7.5 Closing Remarks.- 8. Strategic Reasoning and Adaptation in an Information Economy.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 The Service Market Society.- 8.3 The UMDL Ontology.- 8.4 The UMDL Auctions.- 8.5 Simple Market Scenario — Price Takers.- 8.6 Strategic Agents.- 8.7 Learning Agents.- 8.8 System-Wide Adaptation.- 8.9 Conclusion.- 9. SharedPlans in Electronic Commerce.- 9.1 Introduction.- 9.2 The SharedPlan Model.- 9.3 The Benefits of Using SharedPlans in Electronic Commerce.- 9.4 The General SharedPlan System.- 9.5 Conclusion.- 10. Dynamic Supply Chain Structuring for Electronic Commerce Among Agents.- 10.1 Introduction.- 10.2 The LCT Supply Chain Model.- 10.3 LCT in Inventory Models with Constant Demand Rates.- 10.4 LCT in Periodic Review Stochastic Inventory Model.- 10.5 Computing Inventory Policies with Multiple Leadtime Options.- 10.6 Concluding Remarks.- III. Adaptive Information Agents.- 11. Adaptive Choice of Information Sources.- 11.1 Introduction.- 11.2 A Categorization of Approaches to Developing Adaptive Information Agents.- 11.3 A State-Based Approach to Load Balancing.- 11.4 A Model-Based Approach to Load Balancing.- 11.5 Learning to Select Information Sources.- 11.6 Observations.- 12. Personal Assistants for the Web: A MIT Perspective.- 12.1 Introduction.- 12.2 Intelligent Information Agents Can Break the Knowledge Bottleneck.- 12.3 Intelligent Information Agents and Conventional Information Retrieval.- 12.4 From Information Retrieval to Information Reconnaissance.- 12.5 Information Agents Can Help People Find Common Interests.- 12.6 Information Agents as Matchmakers.- 12.7 Agents for Electronic Commerce.- 12.8 Agents for Visualization of Information Spaces.- 12.9 Information Agents Can Be Controversial.- 13. Amalthaea and Histos: MultiAgent Systems for WWW Sites and Reputation Recommendations.- 13.1 Introduction.- 13.2 Background and Related Work.- 13.3 Amalthaea.- 13.4 Histos.- 13.5 Conclusion and Future Work.- 14. Scalable Web Search by Adaptive Online Agents: An InfoSpiders Case Study.- 14.1 Introduction.- 14.2 Search Engines and Agents.- 14.3 Scalability.- 14.4 InfoSpiders.- 14.5 Case Study.- 14.6 Discussion.- IV. Mobile Information Agents and Security.- 15. Mobile Agents for Distributed Information Retrieval.- 15.1 Introduction.- 15.2 Motivation.- 15.3 Survey of Mobile-Agent Systems.- 15.4 Application: The Technical-Report Searcher.- 15.5 Planning.- 15.6 Conclusion.- 16. On Coordinating Information Agents and Mobility.- 16.1 Introduction.- 16.2 Coordination and Mobility in Information Systems.- 16.3 Software Engineering for Multi Agent Systems.- 16.4 A Coordination Language for Mobility.- 16.5 Simple Coordination Patterns.- 16.6 Related Work and Conclusion.- 17. Spawning Information Agents on the Web.- 17.1 Introduction.- 17.2 Why Is Spawning Necessary?.- 17.3 Requirements for Spawning.- 17.4 The Algorithm.- 17.5 Simulation: The Cloning Case.- 17.6 Spawning: Information Requirements Analysis.- 17.7 Related Work.- 17.8 Conclusion.- 18. Mobile Agent Security.- 18.1 Motivation.- 18.2 Is Code Mobility Dangerous?.- 18.3 Protecting the Host.- 18.4 Run-Time Checks and How To Avoid (Some of) Them.- 18.5 Authentication, Authorization, Allocation.- 18.6 Protecting the Mobile Agents.- 18.7 Detecting Agent Tampering.- 18.8 Preventing Agent Tampering.- 18.9 Secure or Open, Is This the Question?.- 18.10 Outlook.- References.- About the Authors.- List of Contributors.