Distributed enterprise search using software agents

In this paper we introduce a distributed information retrieval system using agent-based technology. In this multiagent system, each agent has its own specific task and can be used to handle a specific document repository. The system is designed to automatically comply with access restriction rules that are normally enforced in companies. It is used in the administration offices of the German capital city Berlin where it serves as a testbed for further research on aggregated search in an enterprise environment with roughly 50,000 employees