A new mechanism for the interoperability of data systems

Abstract

New advances in the areas of Internet and network communications have facilitated in some way the work with distinct data systems located at different places. However, what it is still missing is the possibility of a real and efficient interoperation among those systems. In this paper we present a new mechanism that favors the interoperability of agent based data systems. That mechanism permits an agent of a system 1) to send suitable messages to agents of another system without requiring the establishment of a common communication pattern in advance; and 2) to understand, completely or partially, the messages that are sent by agents of other systems. Moreover, the mechanism also allows the communication among agents that follow different standard languages such as FIPA-ACL and KQML. The main support of the proposed mechanism is an ontology that is divided into three interrelated layers and four different categories. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2004.