Integrating Web Resources into the Agentcities Multi-agent initiative of the EU

1. Integrating Web Resources into the Agentcities Multi-agent initiative of the EU Presenter: László Zsolt Varga Computer and Automation Research InstituteMTA SZTAKI Hungary

2. Project Members • MTA SZTAKI • Széchényi National Library • T-Systems Dataware Ltd. • AITIA Inc.

3. Project objectives Technology:Development of an interface technology and methodology to make Internet information resources accessible through FIPA-compliant agent interface. Prototype:Development of a library agent service. Strategy: Contribute to the establishment of the Agentcities network.

4. What is an agent? Agent:problem-solving unit, perceives and changes its environment, achieves goals, autonomous, proactively adapts to its environment Also a new systems design paradigm: complex distributed systems object oriented  agent oriented Semantic web, Web Services, GRID

5. What is FIPA? • FIPA: Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents • International organization registered in Geneva (1996) • Aims at the development of software standards for interoperable heterogeneous agents and agent based systems • Members: key multinational IT companies, telecom companies, important universities and research institutes • Four meetings annually

6. What is Agentcities? • Global initiative to create a world wide network for agent based services • Composition of dynamic, intelligent and autonomous services • Agent technology, Semantic Web, UDDI service repository, eBusiness standards, GRID • Distributed testbed • EU FP5 project, pattern for EU FP6 Integrated Projects

7. What is Agentcities? (2)

8. What is the role of this IKTA4 project in this? The project’s own objectives methodology for interface technology, development of tools, prototype application Integrated project (FP5, FP6) national project - EU project – Agentcities Task Force Dissemination of the technology on national level project partners Connecting to W3C’s work agents and web services working group

9. Phases of the project Setup agent platform setting up agent environment, assessment of application requirements, design of the functionality of the prototype application, deliverables: technical document and an operating platform Elaborate technology and methodology FIPA standards, agent wrapper, deliverable: system plan serving as a technology guide Prototype systemlibrary application, testing of interface technology, deliverable: prototype system

10. Steps of the implementation of the library agent • Selection of interface towards the existing system • Ontology design and specification • Ontology code (RDF, DAML+OIL, Java) • Implementation of the wrapper • Implementation of agent logic • Testing the prototype system • Integration with other agent services

11. Selection of the interface Libraryapplication GUI • No digging in the UI • No direct data access • Utilise existing application logic ? Html (web) ? ! Z39.50 server ? Web service?

12. Ontology design • Concepts from • real life scenario (detail) • protocol specification (simplify) • value added services (define) • Formats: • FIPA spec-like document • Protégé project • RDFS, HTML, Java code

13. Methodology: Architecture Code intelligence Extend ontology Wrapper agent Web service FIPA ACL Agent: combined service Client agent FIPA ACL SOAP Wrapper agent Web service GUI Generate wrapper ontology Generate SOAP call Generate test client (for the wrapper) WSDL

14. Summary (Results up to now) • Setting up Budapest platform (one of the most stable ones) • Budapest Library Agent Ontology • Elaboration of the principles of the methodology • Code generators supporting the methodology • Skeleton of the prototype application • Presence at AAMAS 2002 conference • Active member of the Agentcities.NET project • W3C Autonomous Web Services Interest Group seed

15. Thank you for your attention!