Chapter XII: Development of Agent-Based Electronic Catalog Retrieval System

Shinichi Nagano, Toshiba Corporation, Japan
Yasuyuki Tahara, Toshiba Corporation, Japan
Tetsuo Hasegawa, Toshiba Corporation, Japan
Akihiko Ohsuga, Toshiba Corporation, Japan

Heavy electric machinery industry is currently developing electronic market places of product and parts. PLIB is the standard of dictionary model and content model for describing both commercial specifications and technical specifications of the parts and products used in the heavy electric machinery industry. This chapter represents development of an agent-based electronic catalog retrieval system using a multi-agent framework Bee-gent, in order to exchange PLIB catalog data between existing heterogenous electronic catalog servers. This chapter also gives qualitative discussion of the developed system.

INTRODUCTION

As Internet technologies develop rapidly , companies are shifting their business activities to e-Business on the Internet. Worldwide competition among corporations accelerates the reorganization of corporate sections and partner groups, resulting in a break of the conventional steady business relationships. For instance, a marketplace would lower the barriers of industries and business categories, and then connect their enterprise systems.

Electronic catalogs contain the data of parts and products information used in the heavy electric machinery industry. They contain not only the commercial specifications for parts (manufacturer name , price, etc.), but also the technical specifications (physical size , performance, quality, etc.). The ISO13584 Parts Library, called PLIB for short, is the standard dictionary model and content model for describing both specifications (see Pierra, 1997, 1998).

Currently, software vendors are developing electronic catalog servers. The electronic catalog server is intended to realize marketplaces of catalog data in a PLIB scheme, thus enabling us to retrieve catalog data and integrate it into our own procurement and CAD systems. However, the following issues must be resolved in order to exchange PLIB catalog data among electronic catalog servers. (1) The time it takes to retrieve the desired catalog data from millions of catalog servers over the Internet must be reduced. (2) Because heterogeneous electronic catalog servers have distinctly different retrieval and inquiry interfaces, the complexity of integrating them must be overcome . (3) A variety of retrieval requirements must be promptly realized.

This chapter represents the development of an electronic catalog retrieval system which uses the multi-agent framework Bee-gent ^TM (see Kawamura, 2000; Bee-gent, 1999) to exchange PLIB catalog data among existing catalog servers. The proposed system agentifies the electronic catalog servers implemented by distinct software vendors. A mediation mobile agent migrates among the servers to retrieve electronic catalog data and then brings them back to the departure server. Thus, an integration of heterogeneous electronic catalog servers can be realized. This agent-based integration system has the following advantages. (1) A mobile mediation agent can retrieve catalog data more effectively than a way of message passing. (2) A coordination procedure among electronic catalog servers can be flexibly defined according to changes in the system environment. (3) Various requirements for retrieving catalog data can be promptly realized.

This chapter is organized as follows . We first describe the integration issues for electronic catalog servers. Then, we introduce a multi-agent framework, Bee-gent. Next, we show the development of the proposed system integrated by Bee-gent, and discuss its advantages. Finally, concluding remarks are given.