Completely Agent-based Approach for Information Gathering on a Distributed and Heterogeneous Environment

In this paper, we propose a completely agent-based approach for Information Gathering on a information network with a large number of distributed heterogeneous sources, such as Internet. Locating and accessing information in such a large distributed system which changes dynamically is challenging and is most suitable for agent-based solutions. As one agent cannot have all the necessary knowledge to solve all the tasks alone, it asks for cooperation to other agents which have speci c domain of expertise. We rst propose a CAS model to express a Society of Cooperative Agents, then review the drawbacks of existing nonagent and partially agent-based solutions for locating information on Internet. Finally, we explain how our completely agent-based solution based on the proposed CAS model overcomes the weak points of the existing approaches. keywords| Society of Agents, Information Gathering, Distributed Heterogeneous Information Network, Internet