Integrating Web Resources into the Agentcities Multi-agent initiative of the EU

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Integrating Web Resources into the Agentcities
Multi-agent initiative of the EU

• Presenter
• László Zsolt Varga
• Computer and Automation Research InstituteMTA
  SZTAKI
• Hungary

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Project Members

• MTA SZTAKI
• Széchényi National Library
• T-Systems Dataware Ltd.
• AITIA Inc.

3
Project objectives

• TechnologyDevelopment of an interface
  technology and methodology to make Internet
  information resources accessible through
  FIPA-compliant agent interface.
• PrototypeDevelopment of a library agent
  service.
• Strategy
• Contribute to the establishment of the
  Agentcities network.

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What is an agent?

• Agentproblem-solving unit, perceives and
  changes its environment, achieves goals,
• autonomous, proactively adapts to its
  environment
• Also a new systems design paradigm
• complex distributed systems
• object oriented ? agent oriented
• Semantic web, Web Services, GRID

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What is FIPA?

• FIPA Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents
• International organization registered in Geneva
  (1996)
• Aims at the development of software standards for
  interoperable heterogeneous agents and agent
  based systems
• Members key multinational IT companies, telecom
  companies, important universities and research
  institutes
• Four meetings annually

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What is Agentcities?

• Global initiative to create a world wide network
  for agent based services
• Composition of dynamic, intelligent and
  autonomous services
• Agent technology, Semantic Web, UDDI service
  repository, eBusiness standards, GRID
• Distributed testbed
• EU FP5 project, pattern for EU FP6 Integrated
  Projects

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What is Agentcities? (2)
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What is the role of this IKTA4 project in this?

• The projects own objectives
• methodology for interface technology,
  development of tools, prototype application
• Integrated project (FP5, FP6)
• national project - EU project Agentcities Task
  Force
• Dissemination of the technology on national level
• project partners
• Connecting to W3Cs work
• agents and web services working group

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Phases of the project

• Setup agent platform
• setting up agent environment, assessment of
  application requirements, design of the
  functionality of the prototype application,
  deliverables technical document and an operating
  platform
• Elaborate technology and methodology
• FIPA standards, agent wrapper, deliverable
  system plan serving as a technology guide
• Prototype systemlibrary application, testing of
  interface technology, deliverable prototype
  system

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Steps of the implementation of the library agent

• Selection of interface towards the existing
  system
• Ontology design and specification
• Ontology code (RDF, DAMLOIL, Java)
• Implementation of the wrapper
• Implementation of agent logic
• Testing the prototype system
• Integration with other agent services

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Selection of the interface
Libraryapplication
GUI

• No digging in the UI
• No direct data access
• Utilise existing application logic

?
Html (web)
?
!
Z39.50 server
?
Web service?
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Ontology design

• Concepts from
• real life scenario (detail)
• protocol specification (simplify)
• value added services (define)
• Formats
• FIPA spec-like document
• Protégé project
• RDFS, HTML, Java code

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Methodology Architecture
Code intelligence
Extend ontology
Web service
Wrapper agent
FIPA ACL
Agent combined service
Client agent
SOAP
FIPA ACL
Web service
Wrapper agent
GUI
Generate wrapper ontology
Generate SOAP call
Generate test client (for the wrapper)
WSDL
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Summary (Results up to now)

• Setting up Budapest platform (one of the most
  stable ones)
• Budapest Library Agent Ontology
• Elaboration of the principles of the methodology
• Code generators supporting the methodology
• Skeleton of the prototype application
• Presence at AAMAS 2002 conference
• Active member of the Agentcities.NET project
• W3C Autonomous Web Services Interest Group seed

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• Thank you for your attention!