Towards an Automatic Multi-Agent System for Joining Information from Specialized Web Sites

摘要

In many cases the information required is on the In- ternet in different formats and comes from heterogeneous data sources. There are mainly two ways of retrieving and integrating information with those features: a manual or an automatic pro- cess. In the latter case, it is needed to develop a system according to certain rules and criteria. This paper presents a multi-agent system that integrates information from heterogeneous special- ized Web sites. Every agent in the group has different abilities and activities, such as the following: retrieving automatically information about call for papers for conferences from different specialized Web sites, which have different structures; extracting information from them; concentrating it in their own storage system; and visualizing it through a flexible Web site with differ- ent search options. Additionally, a Web service interface is pro- vided by the multi-agent system, which allows other systems to retrieve call for papers from it, establishing a certain degree of interoperability to the full system by providing its information in a standard XML format.