Knowledge rovers: Cooperative intelligent agent support for enterprise information architectures

Abstract

The paper presents an information architecture consisting of the information interface, management and gathering layers. Intelligent active services are discussed for each layer, access scenarios are presented, and the role of knowledge rovers is discussed. Knowledge rovers represent a family of cooperating intelligent agents that may be configured to support enterprise tasks, scenarios, and decision-makers. These rovers play specific roles within an enterprise information architecture, supporting users, maintaining active views, mediating between users and heterogeneous data sources, refining data into knowledge, and roaming the Global Information Infrastructure seeking, locating, negotiating for and retrieving data and knowledge specific to their mission.