Information Brokering in an Agent Architecture

To date, document identification based on keyword matching strategies has been the basis of most efforts to provide assistance in accessing information resources on the Internet. However, in view of the limitations on human browsing time and the evolution of more capable software agents, we can expect rapid expansion in the use of fully queryable information sources (such as databases and knowledge bases) and semiqueryable sources (such as form-based query pages on the World Wide Web, and collections of Web pages that are structured by textual markups). The ability to obtain information from a wide variety of queryable and semiqueryable sources is a prerequisite for the success of many types of software agents. Providing access to these sources --- whether for end users or for software agents acting on behalf of users --- poses a number of interesting challenges, many of which can themselves be addressed using agent-based approaches. This paper describes a working prototype Informatio..