On Supporting Cross-Platform Statistical Data Analysis Using JADE

摘要

Data collected by information systems for decision support in a modern business is very often distributed over different databases on different computing platforms. This fact impedes the practice of cross-functional data analysis. To address this problem, use of data warehouses of various forms has been suggested. However, this approach may not be cost-effective and is time-consuming. Nevertheless, it also requires a lot of efforts on maintaining the data warehouses. In this research we are evaluating the feasibility of applying agent technology to collect and integrate, on a regular and ad hoc basis, data distributed over various computing platforms to facilitate statistical data analysis. The prototype designed for the evaluation is implemented in the JADE development environment.