XML BASED MULTI-AGENT COLLABORATION FOR ACTIVE DIGITAL LIBRARIES

摘要

Intelligent and automatic processing of the distributed data that efficiently supports scientific collaboration between both professional and casual users is a highly demanding task. It is also particularly challenging when the system must cope with active data that is processed on-demand. As part of the ongoing SARA Digital Library project, the research presented here proposes an intelligent mobile agent approach to on-demand processing of remote sensing data. We discuss the agent-based infrastructure that we have developed. The design, architecture and implementation of a prototype system that applies this approach are reported on here. In this experiment, the SARA system utilises cooperative software agents for data access and analysis and uses XML to model metadata and support agent communications on clusters of servers. Although the examples presented are mainly based on the SARA system, the applicability of the proposed techniques to the potentially more rewarding active archive system should be obvious. In particular, we believe the proposed agent design can allow distributed access, concurrent querying, and parallel computing over multiple heterogeneous remote-sensing archives in a modular and scalable fashion.