Jerry Fowler

InfoSleuth: agent-based semantic integration of information in open and dynamic environments

The goal of the InfoSleuth project at MCC is to exploit and synthesize new technologies into a unified system that retrieves and processes information in an ever-changing network of information sources. InfoSleuth has its roots in the Carnot project at MCC, which specialized in integrating heterogeneous information bases. However, recent emerging technologies such as internetworking and the World Wide Web have significantly expanded the types, availability, and volume of data available to an information management system. Furthermore, in these new environments, there is no formal control over the registration of new information sources, and applications tend to be developed without complete knowledge of the resources that will be available when they are run. Federated database projects such as Carnot that do static data integration do not scale up and do not cope well with this ever-changing environment. On the other hand, recent Web technologies, based on keyword search engines, are scalable but, unlike federated databases, are incapable of accessing information based on concepts. In this experience paper, we describe the architecture, design, and implementation of a working version of InfoSleuth. We show how InfoSleuth integrates new technological developments such as agent technology, domain ontologies, brokerage, and internet computing, in support of mediated interoperation of data and services in a dynamic and open environment. We demonstrate the use of information brokering and domain ontologies as key elements for scalability.

ACTIVE INFORMATION GATHERING IN INFOSLEUTHTM

InfoSleuth is an agent-based system that can be configured to perform many different information management activities in a distributed environment. InfoSleuthTM agents provide a number of complex query services that require resolving ontology-based queries over dynamically changing, distributed, heterogeneous resources. These include distributed query processing, location-independent single-resource updates, event and information monitoring, statistical or inferential data analysis, and trend discovery in complex event streams. It has been used in numerous applications, including the Environmental Data Exchange Network and the Competitive Intelligence System.

Agent-based semantic interoperability in infosleuth

The InfoSleuth T M Project i at MCC has developed a distributed agent architecture that addresses the need for semantic interoperability among information sources and analytical tools within diverse application domains [4, 13]. InfoSleuth is being used as a significant component of the Environmental Data Exchange Network (EDEN) 2. The current EDEN pilot demonstration enables integrated access via web browser to environmental information resources provided by offices of these agencies located in several states. At the application level, InfoSleuth provides for semantic interchange among users by allowing an application developer to express the concepts and relationships of the application domain in high-level terms that are then translated into the low-level types of database schemas or semantic analyses of text and image resources. At the system level, InfoSleuth employs accepted standards where possible, to simplify data interchange and communication among processes. To apply InfoSleuth in a specific application domain, it is necessary to identify the key elements of the business environment of the application, and create or discover an appropriate ontology for the domain, as well as identify the kinds of data that will be appropriate to the application. For the

Experience with the virtual notebook system: abstraction in hypertext

The Virtual Notebook System (VNS) is a distributed collaborative hypertext system that has made a successful transition from research prototype to commercial product. Experience in developing and deploying the VNS in diverse settings including biomedical research, undergraduate education, and collaborative system prototyping has developed insight into the use of systems for computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). This paper provides a brief overview of the VNS, discusses some of its strengths and weaknesses with respect to collaboration, and draws some conclusions about the impact of metaphor and extensibility on the collaborative process.

The InfoSleuth Project

The InfoSleuth Project at MCC [7, 9, 8, 1] is developing and deploying technologies for finding information in corp~ rate networks and in external networka, such as networks baaed on the emerging National Information Infrastructure. InfoSleuth is baaed on MCC’S previously developed Carnot technology [2, 6, 10], which was successfully used to integrate heterogeneous information resources. The Carnot project developed semantic modeling techniques that enable description of the information resources and pioneered the use of agents to provide interoperation among autonomous systems. The InfoSleuth Project investigates the use of Carnot technologies in a dynamically changing environment, such as the Internet, where there is no formal control of the registration of new information sources and the identities of the resources to be used may be unknown at the time the application is developed. InfoSleuth deploys semantic agents [9, 5, 3] that carry out coordinated searches and cooperate with each other to merge the retrieved data into understandable information. The project is developing technologies to support mediated interoperation of data and services over information networks in a dynamically changing environment, including:

On the Impact of Ontological Commitment

Ontological commitment, or the agreement to have your applications and users conform to a common domain understanding as encapsulated in one or more shared ontologies, is a noble goal and essential for open agent systems. Our experiences building ontology-based agent systems in multiple domains have shown us that the intention for a new application to locate and conform to some existing ontology or ontologies within its domain has many impediments to its success. For instance, the goals of the designer of a domain ontology include developing a complete and comprehensive domain description; however, the application developer may only require a small fragment of that ontology. Multiple applications that conform to the ontology may, in fact, use completely orthogonal fragments of the ontology, and not be able to interact at all. Users may insist on importing into the ontology sets of terms that are neither logically consistent nor easily modelable.

Consortium: a framework for transactions in collaborative environments

We introduce a natural and flexible framework for collaborative transactions called Consortium. We also define a new model for collaborative interaction that we call “What You See Is What You Want” ( WYSIWYW), an abstraction that permits users to choose their own interaction modes with respect to the shared workspace. Consortium is not an extension to the transaction model but rather a flexible framework for defining collaborative transactions. The contribution of this work is a framework for collaborative transactions that allows a transaction to: (1) support the abstraction of WYSIWYW’, (2) span mtdtiple sessions, (3) have multiple commit points, (4) have different participants at different times, and (5) differentiate between the concepts of owners and participants. In addition, this paper defines the concept of transaction leasing, identifies policies for joining, leaving, and participating in a transaction, extends the notion of transaction ownership by allowing ownership transfer, and describes mechanisms for sharing locks in collaborative transactions.