Interoperability among Heterogeneous Software Agents on the Internet

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Abstract
Due to the exponential increase of offered services in the most famous offspring of the Internet, the World WideWeb, searching and selecting relevant services is essential for users. Various search engines and software agents providing various different services are already deployed on the Web. However, novice users of the Web may have no idea where to start their search, where to find what they really want, and what agents are available for doing their job. Even experienced users may not be aware of every change in the Web, e.g., relevant web pages might not exist or their content be valid anymore, and agents may appear and disappear over time. The user is simply overtaxed by manually searching in the Web for information or appropriate agents. On the other hand, as the number and sophistication of agents on the Web that may have been developed by different designers increases, there is an obvious need for a standardized, meaningful communication among agents to enable them to perform collaborative task execution. We distinguish two general agent categories, service providers and service requester agents. Service providers provide some type of service, such as finding information, or performing some particular domain specific problem solving (e.g. number sorting). Requester agents need provider agents to perform some service for them. Since the Internet is an open environment, where information sources, communication links and agents themselves may appear and disappear unpredictably, there is a need for some means to help requester agents find providers. Agents that help locate others are called middle agents.

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