Abstract
The development of networking technology has resulted in a computing environment which is highly distributed, heterogeneous and dynamic. In order for the autonomous software components in such an environment to share their information, and hence to collaborate with each other, they must be able to advertise their capabilities — that is, to express what they have got to offer — in a form that can be understood by other resources.
In this paper, we study the problem of advertising the capabilities of an important class of resources within distributed information systems: namely, databases. We argue that current advertising mechanisms have limitations when applied to database systems, and propose an approach which overcomes these limitations. The resulting advertisement language is flexible and allows database components to advertise their capabilities in both a general and a specific way. We have demonstrated its utility by using it to advertise capabilities within a network of product databases created for Pirelli Cables Ltd.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Y. Arens, C.-N. Hsu, and C.A. Knoblock. Query Processing in the SIMS Information Mediator. In Austin Tate, editor, Advanced Planning Technology, pages 61–69. AAAI Press, 1996.
P.G. Baker, A. Brass, S. Bechhfer, C. Goble, N.W. Paton, and R. Stevens. TAMBIS-Transparent Access to Multiple Biological Information Sources. In J. Glasgow et al., editor, Proc. of 6th Int. Conf. on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, pages 25–34, Montréal. AAAI Press, 1998.
K. Decker et al. Matchmaking and Brokering. In M. Tokoro, editor, Proc. of 2nd Int. Conf. on Multiagent Sytems, Kyoto. AAAI Press, 1996.
K. Decker, K. Sycara, and M. Williamson. Middle-Agents for the Internet. In Proc. of 15th Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’97), pages 578–583, Nagoya, Japan. Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.
T. Finin, R. Fritzson, D. McKay, and R. McEntire. KQML as an Agent Communication Language. In Proc. of 3rd Int. Conf. on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM’94), pages 456–463, Gaithersburg, USA, 1994. ACM Press.
M. Karlsson. A Matchmaker Agent for Database Applications. Master’s thesis, Cardiff University, September 1999.
D. Kuokka and L. Harada. Supporting Information Retrieval via Matchmaking. In C. Knoblock and A. Levy, editors, Proc. of AAAI Spring Symp. on Information Gathering from Heterogeneous, Distributed Envs., pages 111–115. AAAI, 1995.
M. Nodine, W. Bohrer, and A.H.H. Ngu. Semantic Brokering over Dynamic Heterogeneous Data Sources in InfoSleuth. In M. Papazoglou, C. Pu, and M. Kitsuregawa, editors, Proc. of 15th Int. Conf. on Data Engineering (ICDE’99), pages 358–365, Sydney. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1999.
N. Singh, M. Genesereth, and M.A. Syed. A Distributed and Anonymous Knowledge Sharing Approach to Software Interoperation. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 4(4):339–367, 1995.
K. Sycara, J. Lu, and M. Klusch. Interoperability among Heterogeneous Software Agents on the Internet. Technical Report CMU-RI-TR-98-22, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, October 1998.
K. Sycara, J. Lu, M. Klusch, and S. Widoff. Matchmaking among Heterogeneous Agents in the Internet. In S. Murugesan and D.E. O’Leary, editors, Proc. of AAAI Spring Symp. on Intelligent Agents in Cyberspace, Stanford, USA, 1999.
V. Vassalos and Y. Papakonstantinou. Describing and Using Query Capabilities of Heterogeneous Sources. In M. Jarke et al., editor, Proc. of 23rd Int. Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, pages 256–265, Athens, 1997. Morgan Kaufmann, Inc.
V. Vassalos and Y. Papkonstantinou. Expressive Capabilities Description Languages and Query Rewriting Algorithms. Journal of Logic Programming, 43(1):75–122, 2000. Special Issue on Logic-Based Heterogeneous Information Systems.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Embury, S.M., Shao, J., Gray, W.A., Fishlock, N. (2000). Advertising Database Capabilities for Information Sharing. In: Wangler, B., Bergman, L. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1789. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45140-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45140-4_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67630-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45140-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive