A semi-universal e-commerce agent: domain-dependant information gathering
Aleksander Pivk, Matjaž Gams · International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems · 2003
A universal e-commerce agent should provide commerce functions through the Internet by accessing arbitrary e-commerce sites and on this basis offer intelligent information services on its own. Our system ShinA (SHoppINg Assistant) is a semi-automatic e-commerce agent. It can enter an arbitrary e-commerce site by observing a human user performing the first query. By understanding key concepts of the first query, ShinA performs following queries by other users. In a consequence, a user enters ShinA by asking for a particular item, and ShinA provides all relevant e-commerce options from various providers. The major advantage of ShinA is a semi-automatic creation of a wrapper around a particular e-commerce site demanding minimal human interaction/corrections. ShinA is a successor of the EMA (EMployment Agent) prototype, which performs similar functions in job queries over the Internet.