Inter-Agent Cooperation Supported by XML and CORBA in Heterogeneous Information Systems
Résumé
The growth of Internet is stimulating an increasing number of autonomous information systems to cooperate. Information systems are heterogeneous and distributed in nature. Their interoperability for cooperation is not an easy task to achieve. The diversity of information sources generates incompatibilities that need to be surmounted before the cooperation of information systems becomes feasible. However, few help deals with the cooperation of separately-developed systems in heterogeneous distributed environment. The agent-oriented technology can be leveraged to enhance the modeling of cooperative information systems by providing a flexible design and reusable applications. Furthermore, XML is a powerful tool for data representation, storage, and interoperation. This paper describes major design goals of an agent-based architecture, which supports the cooperation of heterogeneous distributed information systems. It also sketches the implementation, which uses XML in the CORBA middleware for showing the impact on the cooperation efficiency. Examples are given from supply chains of manufacturing enterprises.