Technologies: A Software Agent Approach*
Hemant K. Bhargava, Ramayya Krishnan, Stephen F. Roehrig, Michael P. Casey, David Kaplan, Rudolf Müller · 1997
DecisionNet is a distributed, Web-based electronic mar ket for decision technologies such as data, models, so lution algorithms, and modeling environments. Con sumer-provider interactions are facilitated by model management software agents provided by Decision Net. To illustrate different approaches for design ing this agent functionality, we present two agents that embody different designs for mediating consumer and provider interaction with the AMPL and GAMS modeling environments. The AMPL agent is lean, and places significant knowledge and reasoning requi rements on both providers (when registering a tech nology) and consumers (when using technologies). In contrast,the GAMS agent encapsulates knowledge of the GAMS language and modeling environment to fa cilitate registration of models by providers and to cre ate a run time interface to models for consumers. We discuss the relative advantages of both approaches and argue for the need to incorporate them into environ ments such as DecisionNet.