Cooperative agents and their application in the Internet
Zhang Xincheng, Meilin Shi, Zhou Chen · 2002
In order to resolve the problem brought by the heterogeneity dynamics and distribution features of the Internet, we introduce agents and brokers into the Internet. A agent is an autonomic entity which represents a heterogeneity-interfaced object to provide a uniform interface; the broker provides the means by which agents can be aware and cooperate with each other efficiently. After giving the agent-based resource heterogeneity model, the broker-based agent cooperation model and their mathematical description using colored Petri nets, we discuss the Web cooperative retrieval system, whose kernel elements are broker-centered cooperative agents. The system is featured by the virtual resource base (VRB), and it supports the cooperative retrieval simultaneously on several distributive resource bases.