Research in Information Systems has switched its focus from data to communication.
The communication between different autonomous Information Systems requires a
certain amount of intelligence of each system. The system should be able to know which
queries it can/may handle and also be able to negotiate about the information that it will
give. In short, these systems evolve into what is called Cooperative Information Agents.
We describe an architecture for these CIA’s in which the relations of a CIA with other
CIA’s are handled on two levels. The messages themselves are handled by the
communication manager. The communication manager can also negotiate a contract with
other CIA’s. The contracts (which may include communication or transaction protocols)
between agents are handled by the contract manager of the CIA responsible for the
contract. The messages between the agents are modeled using speech act theory which
provides for a rich and flexible communication. In addition, we describe a lexicon in
which the conceptual meaning of the terms of communication can be defined. Together,
these levels provide an integrated and rich semantics for the communication between
CIAs. These can be interorganizational, as in EDI applications, or intraorganizational, as
in Workflow Management
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