A multi-agent system for cooperative document indexing and queryingin distributed networked environments

摘要

In an age of rapidly changing work environments it is becomingincreasingly the norm for project and research teams to be composed ofindividuals who are geographically distributed but connected for workpurposes by high speed communication networks. In such environmentsthere is a real need for automated support systems that facilitate theeasy and effective sharing of work related documents and files amongworkgroup members. This paper presents a cooperative agent basedsolution known as MAIQS, which is an acronym for Multi-Agent Indexingand Query System. A MAIQS agent is installed on each team member'sworkstation where it takes on responsibilities for: building anddynamically maintaining indexes to specified user data; locating itscounterpart agents on other machines; and supporting parallel queriesacross the community of agents. Such queries may utilise directlyconnected synchronous exchanges or (where firewalls necessitate)asynchronous email based exchanges. MAIQS, a 100% Java application, ispresented here from a network computing perspective and its currentimplementation and future development examined