Query restart strategies for Web agents
Prasad Chalasani, Somesh Jha, Onn M. Shehory, Katia P. Sycara · 1998
With the explosive growth of the intemet, autonomous agents will increasingly need strategies for efficiently retrieving information, The time an agent (or server) takes to answer a query issued to it is often a random variable, whose distribution can be estimated by collecting statistics.When an agent A sends a query to another agent B and the query has not completed in some period of time, agent A faces the dilemma of whether to continue waiting or reissue the query (to agent B or to a different one).When some information is available about the probability distribution of the query completion time of the agents, it is possible to devise schemes for agents to reissue queries in such a way that the expected query completion time is reduced significantly.We design such schemes for various models of query-answering ngents.Where meaningful, we take into account the cost of sending a query to an agent.'This reccnrcb hns been supported in pat by ONR Gmnt#N-OMI14-96-I-1222,by NW Orant lR14612131 nnd 1113-9712607.Pcrmissiou IO ulnke dighnl/luwd copies ul'nll or pai of lhis nlntcrinl Ibr pcr:,unnl or clnssroonl use is grantad without Ihc provided what the copies nre INIL IWI~~: or distributed l'or prolit or conuurrcinl ndvnntngc, Ihe copyright police.the tide oflhc publicntion nnd itx dnk nppcnr.nnd notice is given lhnl copying is by pcnnission 01' ACM.Inc.To copy okwise.IO rcpublihh, to post on servers or lo redistribute lo lists.requires prior hpecific penuir;siou nndlor I'ce.