VIRTUAL CATALOG SYSTEM, AND MEDIATING AGENT, CATALOG AGENT AND PROGRAM STORAGE MEDIUM FOR THE SYSTEM

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To suppress an increase in the load of data base construction on each server side and to provide an easy and efficient catalog retrieving work on each user side.;SOLUTION: Advertisement information on own databases 25 to 28 of catalog agents 21 to 24 is held by medicating agents 13 and 14, the mediating agents having received retrieval requests for articles and services from user agents 5 to 8 send retrieval requests to selected catalog agents according to the advertisement information, and the catalog agents having received them execute the retrieval requests to the own databases and return the retrieval outputs. Also, the mediating agents after decomposing the contents of the retrieval requests send the decomposed elements as units to the catalog agents and further generate retrieval results where the retrieval outputs from the plurality of catalog agents are integrated, thereby sending them to the user agents.;COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT