Procedimento para a construção de índices semânticos baseados em ontologias de domínio específico

The current on-line search systems are still far from providing users with contextualized and accurate answers because users have to make additional efforts to filter and evaluate information supplied to them. One of the ways to improve the results is to create semantic indexes that incorporate knowledge and intelligent processing of resources. When it comes to the implementation of semantic indexes, however, there is a wide range of research studies with their own procedures and lengthy conceptualization, implementation, and refinement processes. Thus, it becomes of the utmost importance to define an instrument that allows creating these kinds of structures in a more structured and efficient manner. This work proposes a procedure that makes it possible to create semantic indexes based on domain-specific ontologies. The methodology entailed creating a state of the art of the various existing proposals and drawing a general procedure that incorporates the best practice for creating semantic indexes. Then, a semantic index was created of the domain of plants and their components. The results demonstrate that the defined process is a good instrument that guides implementation of these kinds of structures with a high degree of customization. Nevertheless, it also shows that the process depends on other variables in building and processing the index, so the design needs to be re-examined until the desirable results are obtained.Los sistemas de búsqueda web actual, aún están lejos de ofrecer respuestas completamente contextualizadas y precisas a los usuarios, ya que éstos deben hacer esfuerzos adicionales de filtrado y evaluación de la información proporcionada. Una forma de mejorar los resultados, es mediante la creación de índices semánticos, los cuales incorporan conocimiento y procesamiento inteligente de los recursos. Sin embargo, al momento de implementar los índices semánticos, existen variadas investigaciones con procedimientos propios y con procesos largos de conceptualización, implementación y afinación. Es así, como se vuelve importante definir una herramienta que permita crear este tipo de estructuras de una manera más estructurada y eficiente. El presente trabajo propone un procedimiento que permite crear índices semánticos a partir de ontologías de dominio específico. La metodología utilizada fue la creación de un estado del arte de las diferentes propuestas existentes y posteriormente la abstracción de un procedimiento general que incorpore las mejores prácticas de creación de índices semánticos. Posteriormente, se creó un índice semántico el dominio de las plantas y sus componentes. Los resultados permiten establecer que el proceso definido es una buena herramienta para guiar la implementación de este tipo de estructuras con un alto grado de personalización. Sin embargo, también evidenció que el proceso depende otras variables al momento de construir y trabajar con el índice y por lo tanto se debe reevaluar el diseño hasta obtener los resultados deseados.Os atuais sistemas de busca na web, estão ainda longe de fornecer respostas plenamente contextualizadas e precisas aos usuários, uma vez que eles devem fazer esforços extras de filtragem e avaliação das informações fornecidas. Uma forma de melhorar os resultados é através da criação de índices semânticos, que incorporam conhecimento e processamento inteligente dos recursos. No entanto, no momento de implementar os índices semânticos, existem variadas investigações com procedimentos próprios e com longos processos de conceituação, implementação e ajuste. É assim que se torna importante definir uma ferramenta que permita criar este tipo de estruturas de uma maneira mais estruturada e eficiente. Este artigo propõe um procedimento que permite criar índices semânticos a partir de ontologias de domínio específico. A metodologia usada foi a criação de um estado de arte das diferentes propostas existentes e posteriormente a abstração de um procedimento geral que incorpore as melhores práticas de criação de índices semânticos. Posteriormente, foi criado um índice semântico de masterização das plantas e seus componentes. Os resultados permitem estabelecer que o processo definido é uma boa ferramenta para orientar a implementação deste tipo de estruturas com um alto grau de personalização. No entanto, também revelou que o processo depende de outras variáveis no momento de construir e trabalhar com o índice e, portanto, o projeto deve ser reavaliado até obter os resultados desejado

Knowledge management using machine learning, natural language processing and ontology

This research developed a concept indexing framework which systematically integrates machine learning, natural language processing and ontology technologies to facilitate knowledge acquisition, extraction and organisation. The research reported in this thesis focuses first on the conceptual model of concept indexing, which represents knowledge as entities and concepts. Then the thesis outlines its benefits and the system architecture using this conceptual model. Next, the thesis presents a knowledge acquisition framework using machine learning in focused crawling Web content to enable automatic knowledge acquisition. Then, the thesis presents two language resources developed to enable ontology tagging, which are: an ontology dictionary and an ontologically tagged corpus. The ontologically tagged corpus is created using a heuristic algorithm developed in the thesis. Next, the ontology tagging algorithm is developed with the ontology dictionary and the ontologically tagged corpus to enable ontology tagging. Finally, the thesis presents the conceptual model, the system architecture, and the prototype system using concept indexing developed to facilitate knowledge acquisition, extraction and organisation. The solutions proposed in the thesis are illustrated with examples based on a prototype system developed in this thesis

Performance and Implications of Semantic Indexing in a Distributed Environment

www.canis.uiuc.ed

Performance and Implications of Semantic Indexing in a Distributed Environment

A research prototype is presented for semantic indexing and retrieval in Information Retrieval. The prototype is motivated by a desire to provide a more efficient and effective information retrieval system compared to the current state of the art. An overview of the Interspace architecture layers is discussed. An object model supporting semantic operations is developed. The model contains a rich set of classes and relationships of the data for the semantic indexing module. The basis of our semantic indexing is done by the creation of concept space. A concept space is an index of a collection that uses document statistics to capture the relationships between concepts. It is useful for boosting text search, by term suggestion of alternative terms semantically related to query terms. Over the years, we have developed generic technology for concept spaces computation on large collections across many subjects. Recent computations on discipline-scale collections have been made on high-end su..

Distributed information access in New Zealand

The purpose of this document is to describe the key technology issues for distributed information access in New Zealand. It is written from an industrial and public sector perspective, representing the views and findings of a wide cross-section of institutions in public and private sectors. It is an output of Objective 2 of the Distributed Information Systems project funded under contract UO0621 by the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST). It complements other project material produced by the academic research team at the University of Otago and its collaborators. It focuses on requirements and applications, and is intended to provide a real-world, New Zealand-oriented context for the research in distributed information technologies (DIST). The report represents the culmination of a series of workshops, industrial consultations, a questionnaire, and the experiences of the authors' institutions during the project, and therefore it supplements any previously produced material.UnpublishedPurvis, M., Cranefield, S., and Nowostawski, M., “A Distributed Architecture for Environmental Information Systems” in Environmental Software Systems – Environmental Information and Decision Support, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands (2000) 49-56. Bush, G., Purvis, M., and Cranefield, S., “Experiences in the Development of an Agent Architecture”, in Design and Applications of Intelligent Agents, C. Zhang & V-W Soo (eds.), Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 1881, ISBN: 3540679111, Berlin, Germany (2000) 76-87. Huang, Z., Cranefield, S., Purvis, P. and McDonald, J. R, “A Proposal for a New Generation Hypertext Transfer Protocol on ATM Networks”, Chapter 34, World Wide Web: Technologies and Applications for the New Millennium, Computer Science Research, Education, and Applications Press, Athens, GA, U.S.A. (2000) 255-259. Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “An agent-based architecture for software tool coordination”, Intelligent Agent Systems: Theoretical and Practical Issues, L. Cavedon, A. Rao, W. Wobcke (eds.), Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 1209, Berlin, Germany (1997) 44-58. Purvis, M., Zhou, Q., Cranefield, S., Ward, R., Raykov, R., and Jessberger, D., “Spatial Information Modelling and Analysis in a Distributed Environment” accepted for publication in Environmental Modelling and Software (2001). Diaz, A., Cranefield, S., and Purvis, M., “Planning and Matchmaking in a Multi-Agent System for Software Integration”, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Mathematical and Computer Modelling, International Association for Mathematical and Computer Modelling (1997) Nowostawski, M., Purvis, M. and Cranefield, S. Agent-Oriented Modelling for Complex Systems, in Applied Complexity—from neural nets to managed landscapes, S. Halloy and T. Williams (eds.), Christchurch, New Zealand Institute for Crop and Food Research (2000) 205–220 Huang, Z., Sun, C., Purvis, M., Cranefield, S., "Weak sequential consistency models for distributed shared memory", to appear in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computing and Information (ICCI '2000), Kuwait (2000). Cranefield, S., Purvis, M., and Nowostawski, M., “Is it an Ontology or an Abstract Syntax? Modelling Objects, Knowledge and Agent Messages”, Proceedings of the Workshop on Applications of Ontologies and Problem-Solving Methods at the 14th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'00), Berlin, Germany (2000) 16.1–16.4. Huang, Z., Sun, C., Purvis, M. and Cranefield, S. “View-based Consistency for Distributed Shared Memory”, in Proceedings of the Joint Meeting of the 4th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI'2000) and the 6th International Conference on Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis (ISAS'2000), Volume VIII, Lee, J. K., Juric, M., Bruzzone, A., Klovshy, D. and Fujita, M. (eds.) International Institute of Informatics and Cybernetics (2000) 1–6 Bush, G., Nowostawski, M., Cranefield, S. and Purvis, P. Platforms for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, in Proceedings of the 7th Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2000), Dong J. S., He, J. and Purvis, M. (eds.), Los Alamitos, CA, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press (2000) 480–488 Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Integrating Environmental Information: Incorporating Metadata in a Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, to appear in Proceedings of the Workshop Symposium on Integration in Environmental Information Systems (ISESS 2000), Environmental Informatics Institute, Gaiberg, Germany (2000). Nowostawski, M., Purvis, M., and Cranefield, S., “An architectural approach to messaging in multi-agent systems”, Proceedings of the Autonomous Agents 2000 Workshop on Infrastructure for Scalable Multi-agent Systems (W13), Barcelona, Spain (2000) 105-110. Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Extending Agent Messaging to Enable OO Information Exchange”, Cybernetics and Systems 2000, (Proceedings of the 15th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research), R.Trappl (ed.), Vienna, Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies, Vienna, Austria (2000) 573-578. Purvis, M., Cranefield. S., Bush, G., Carter, D., McKinlay, B., Nowostawski, M., and Ward, R., “The NZDIS Project: an Agent-based Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, Proceedings of the Hawai`i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-33), R. H. Sprague, Jr. (ed.), (CD ROM) IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA (2000). Huang, Z., Cranefield, S., Chee, V. K. M., Purvis, M., “A Java Networking API for ATM Networks”, in Proceedings of the 31th International Conference and Exhibition on Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS Asia’99), Nanjing, China, (1999) 306-315. Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “UML as an ontology modelling language” Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Information Integration, 16th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-99), (1999) 46-53. Cranefield, S.J.S., Moreale, E., McKinlay, B. and Purvis, M. K., “Automating the Interoperation of Information Processing Tools”, Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-32). Maui, Hawaii, IEEE (CD-ROM) (1999) 10 pages. Cranefield, S.J.S., McKinlay, B., Moreale, E. and Purvis, M.K. “Automating Information Processing Tasks: An Agent-based Architecture”, TZI Report 9/98: Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Agents in Information and Process Management, 22. Deutsche Jahrestagung für Künstliche Intelligenz (22nd German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, KI-98). Bremen, Center for Computing Technologies (TZI), University of Bremen (1998). Purvis, M., Cranefield, S., and Ward, R., “Distributed Software Systems: From Objects to Agents”, Software Engineering: Education & Practice, Proceedings of the 1998 International Conference, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA (1998) 158-165. Yu, Byung Hyun, Design and Implementation of a Native Java Interface for ATM Network Applications, M. Sc. Thesis, University of Otago (2000). Nowostawski, M., Bush, G., Purvis, M. K., and Cranefield, S., "Platforms for Agent-oriented Software" Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/13, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Cranefield, S., Purvis, M., and Nowostawski, M., “Is it an Ontology or an Abstract Syntax? Modelling Objects, Knowledge and Agent Messages”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/08, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Extending Agent Messaging to Enable OO Information Exchange”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/07, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Integrating Environmental Information: Incorporating Metadata in a Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/02, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Purvis, M., Cranefield, S., Nowostawski, M., Bush, G., Carter, D., McKinlay, B., Ward, R., “The NZDIS Project: an Agent-based Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 99/17, ISSN1172-6024 (1999). Purvis, M., Cranefield. S., and Nowostawski, M., “A Distributed Architecture for Environmental Information Systems”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 99/06, ISSN 1172-6024 (1999). Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “UML as an Ontology Modelling Language”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 99/01, ISSN 1172-6024 (1999). Cranefield, S., McKinlay, B., Moreale, E., Purvis, M., “Automating Information Processing Tasks: an Agent-based Architecture”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 98/7, ISSN 1172-6024 (1998). Brendon Cahoon, Kathryn S. McKinley and Zhihong Lu. “Evaluating the performance of distributed architectures for information retrieval using a variety of workloads”. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 18, 1 (Jan. 2000), Pages 1 – 43. S.-H Gary Chan and Fouad Tobagi. “Distributed servers architecture for networked video services”. IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking 9, 2 (Apr. 2001), Pages 125 – 136. Conrad T. K. Chang and Bruce R. Schatz. “Performance and implications of semantic indexing in a distributed environment”. Proceedings of the eighth international conference on Information knowledge management, 1999, Pages 391 – 398. Waiman Cheung and Cheng Hsu. “The model-assisted global query system for multiple databases in distributed enterprises”. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 14, 4 (Oct. 1996), Pages 421 – 470. Miyi Chung, Ruth Wilson, Kevin Shaw and Maria A. Cobb. “Distributing Mapping Objects with the Geospatial Information Database”. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications, published by the IEEE, 1998. Paul Dourish. “Using metalevel techniques in a flexible toolkit for CSCW applications”. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 5, 2 (Jun. 1998), Pages 109 – 155. Jeri Edwards. “3-Tier Client/Server at Work”. Pub. John Wiley, 1997. Jacob Harris and Vivek Sarkar. “Lightweight object-oriented shared variables for distributed applications on the Internet”. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, 1998, Pages 296 – 309. Nigel Hinds, Chinya V. Ravishankar. “Managing Metadata for Distributed Information Servers”. Proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'98), published by the IEEE, 1998. Nicholas Kassem. “Designing Enterprise Applications with the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition”. Pub. Addison-Wesley, 2000. Oscar Luiz Monteiro de Farias and Luiz Má C. P. M. de Farias. “Distributed information system on an Internet/intranet environment (DISI2E)”.Proceedings of the eighth ACM symposium on Advances in geographic information systems, 2000, Pages 197 – 198. Julio C. Navas and Michael Wynblatt. “The network is the database: data management for highly distributed systems”. To be published in: ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of Data on Management of data, 2001. Okada, R.; Eun-Seok Lee; Shiratori, N. “Agent-based approach for information gathering on highly distributed and heterogeneous environment”. Proceedings of the 1996 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS '96), published by the IEEE. Robert Orfali and Dan Harkey. “Client/Server Programming with JAVA and CORBA”. Pub. John Wiley, 1998. Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey and Jeri Edwards. “Instant CORBA”. Pub. John Wiley, 1997. Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey and Jeri Edwards. “The Essential Distributed Objects Survival Guide, 2nd Edition”. Pub. John Wiley, 1996. Owen de Kretser and Alistair Moffat. “Methodologies for Distributed Information Retrieval”. Proceedings of the The 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, published by the IEEE, 1998. Andreas Paepcke, Chen-Chuan K. Chang, Terry Winograd and Héctor García-Molina. “Interoperability for digital libraries worldwide”. Commun. ACM 41, 4 (Apr. 1998), Pages 33 – 42. Ahmed Saleh and George R. R. Justo. “A configuration-oriented framework for distributed multimedia applications”. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM symposium on Applied computing 2000 (volume 1), 2000, Pages 278 -280. Wolfgang Theilmann and Kurt Rothermel. “Disseminating Mobile Agents for Distributed Information Filtering”. Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Agent Systems and Applications Third International Symposium on Mobile Agents, published by the IEEE, 1998. Edgar Weippl. “Building secure knowledge bases: combining Java agents and Dbagents”. To be published in: Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents, 2001. Jinxi Xu and W. Bruce Croft. “Cluster-based language models for distributed retrieval”. Proceedings of the 22nd annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, 1999, Pages 254 – 261. Zhili Zhang and William Perrizo. “Distributed query processing using active networks”. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM symposium on Applied computing 2000 (volume 1), 2000, Pages 374 – 380

Distributed information access in New Zealand

The purpose of this document is to describe the key technology issues for distributed information access in New Zealand. It is written from an industrial and public sector perspective, representing the views and findings of a wide cross-section of institutions in public and private sectors. It is an output of Objective 2 of the Distributed Information Systems project funded under contract UO0621 by the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST). It complements other project material produced by the academic research team at the University of Otago and its collaborators. It focuses on requirements and applications, and is intended to provide a real-world, New Zealand-oriented context for the research in distributed information technologies (DIST). The report represents the culmination of a series of workshops, industrial consultations, a questionnaire, and the experiences of the authors' institutions during the project, and therefore it supplements any previously produced material.UnpublishedPurvis, M., Cranefield, S., and Nowostawski, M., “A Distributed Architecture for Environmental Information Systems” in Environmental Software Systems – Environmental Information and Decision Support, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands (2000) 49-56. Bush, G., Purvis, M., and Cranefield, S., “Experiences in the Development of an Agent Architecture”, in Design and Applications of Intelligent Agents, C. Zhang & V-W Soo (eds.), Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 1881, ISBN: 3540679111, Berlin, Germany (2000) 76-87. Huang, Z., Cranefield, S., Purvis, P. and McDonald, J. R, “A Proposal for a New Generation Hypertext Transfer Protocol on ATM Networks”, Chapter 34, World Wide Web: Technologies and Applications for the New Millennium, Computer Science Research, Education, and Applications Press, Athens, GA, U.S.A. (2000) 255-259. Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “An agent-based architecture for software tool coordination”, Intelligent Agent Systems: Theoretical and Practical Issues, L. Cavedon, A. Rao, W. Wobcke (eds.), Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 1209, Berlin, Germany (1997) 44-58. Purvis, M., Zhou, Q., Cranefield, S., Ward, R., Raykov, R., and Jessberger, D., “Spatial Information Modelling and Analysis in a Distributed Environment” accepted for publication in Environmental Modelling and Software (2001). Diaz, A., Cranefield, S., and Purvis, M., “Planning and Matchmaking in a Multi-Agent System for Software Integration”, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Mathematical and Computer Modelling, International Association for Mathematical and Computer Modelling (1997) Nowostawski, M., Purvis, M. and Cranefield, S. Agent-Oriented Modelling for Complex Systems, in Applied Complexity—from neural nets to managed landscapes, S. Halloy and T. Williams (eds.), Christchurch, New Zealand Institute for Crop and Food Research (2000) 205–220 Huang, Z., Sun, C., Purvis, M., Cranefield, S., "Weak sequential consistency models for distributed shared memory", to appear in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computing and Information (ICCI '2000), Kuwait (2000). Cranefield, S., Purvis, M., and Nowostawski, M., “Is it an Ontology or an Abstract Syntax? Modelling Objects, Knowledge and Agent Messages”, Proceedings of the Workshop on Applications of Ontologies and Problem-Solving Methods at the 14th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'00), Berlin, Germany (2000) 16.1–16.4. Huang, Z., Sun, C., Purvis, M. and Cranefield, S. “View-based Consistency for Distributed Shared Memory”, in Proceedings of the Joint Meeting of the 4th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI'2000) and the 6th International Conference on Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis (ISAS'2000), Volume VIII, Lee, J. K., Juric, M., Bruzzone, A., Klovshy, D. and Fujita, M. (eds.) International Institute of Informatics and Cybernetics (2000) 1–6 Bush, G., Nowostawski, M., Cranefield, S. and Purvis, P. Platforms for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, in Proceedings of the 7th Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2000), Dong J. S., He, J. and Purvis, M. (eds.), Los Alamitos, CA, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press (2000) 480–488 Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Integrating Environmental Information: Incorporating Metadata in a Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, to appear in Proceedings of the Workshop Symposium on Integration in Environmental Information Systems (ISESS 2000), Environmental Informatics Institute, Gaiberg, Germany (2000). Nowostawski, M., Purvis, M., and Cranefield, S., “An architectural approach to messaging in multi-agent systems”, Proceedings of the Autonomous Agents 2000 Workshop on Infrastructure for Scalable Multi-agent Systems (W13), Barcelona, Spain (2000) 105-110. Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Extending Agent Messaging to Enable OO Information Exchange”, Cybernetics and Systems 2000, (Proceedings of the 15th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research), R.Trappl (ed.), Vienna, Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies, Vienna, Austria (2000) 573-578. Purvis, M., Cranefield. S., Bush, G., Carter, D., McKinlay, B., Nowostawski, M., and Ward, R., “The NZDIS Project: an Agent-based Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, Proceedings of the Hawai`i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-33), R. H. Sprague, Jr. (ed.), (CD ROM) IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA (2000). Huang, Z., Cranefield, S., Chee, V. K. M., Purvis, M., “A Java Networking API for ATM Networks”, in Proceedings of the 31th International Conference and Exhibition on Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS Asia’99), Nanjing, China, (1999) 306-315. Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “UML as an ontology modelling language” Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Information Integration, 16th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-99), (1999) 46-53. Cranefield, S.J.S., Moreale, E., McKinlay, B. and Purvis, M. K., “Automating the Interoperation of Information Processing Tools”, Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-32). Maui, Hawaii, IEEE (CD-ROM) (1999) 10 pages. Cranefield, S.J.S., McKinlay, B., Moreale, E. and Purvis, M.K. “Automating Information Processing Tasks: An Agent-based Architecture”, TZI Report 9/98: Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Agents in Information and Process Management, 22. Deutsche Jahrestagung für Künstliche Intelligenz (22nd German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, KI-98). Bremen, Center for Computing Technologies (TZI), University of Bremen (1998). Purvis, M., Cranefield, S., and Ward, R., “Distributed Software Systems: From Objects to Agents”, Software Engineering: Education & Practice, Proceedings of the 1998 International Conference, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA (1998) 158-165. Yu, Byung Hyun, Design and Implementation of a Native Java Interface for ATM Network Applications, M. Sc. Thesis, University of Otago (2000). Nowostawski, M., Bush, G., Purvis, M. K., and Cranefield, S., "Platforms for Agent-oriented Software" Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/13, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Cranefield, S., Purvis, M., and Nowostawski, M., “Is it an Ontology or an Abstract Syntax? Modelling Objects, Knowledge and Agent Messages”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/08, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Extending Agent Messaging to Enable OO Information Exchange”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/07, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “Integrating Environmental Information: Incorporating Metadata in a Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 2000/02, ISSN1172-6024 (2000). Purvis, M., Cranefield, S., Nowostawski, M., Bush, G., Carter, D., McKinlay, B., Ward, R., “The NZDIS Project: an Agent-based Distributed Information Systems Architecture”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 99/17, ISSN1172-6024 (1999). Purvis, M., Cranefield. S., and Nowostawski, M., “A Distributed Architecture for Environmental Information Systems”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 99/06, ISSN 1172-6024 (1999). Cranefield, S. and Purvis, M., “UML as an Ontology Modelling Language”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 99/01, ISSN 1172-6024 (1999). Cranefield, S., McKinlay, B., Moreale, E., Purvis, M., “Automating Information Processing Tasks: an Agent-based Architecture”, Information Science Discussion Paper Series, Number 98/7, ISSN 1172-6024 (1998). Brendon Cahoon, Kathryn S. McKinley and Zhihong Lu. “Evaluating the performance of distributed architectures for information retrieval using a variety of workloads”. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 18, 1 (Jan. 2000), Pages 1 – 43. S.-H Gary Chan and Fouad Tobagi. “Distributed servers architecture for networked video services”. IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking 9, 2 (Apr. 2001), Pages 125 – 136. Conrad T. K. Chang and Bruce R. Schatz. “Performance and implications of semantic indexing in a distributed environment”. Proceedings of the eighth international conference on Information knowledge management, 1999, Pages 391 – 398. Waiman Cheung and Cheng Hsu. “The model-assisted global query system for multiple databases in distributed enterprises”. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 14, 4 (Oct. 1996), Pages 421 – 470. Miyi Chung, Ruth Wilson, Kevin Shaw and Maria A. Cobb. “Distributing Mapping Objects with the Geospatial Information Database”. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications, published by the IEEE, 1998. Paul Dourish. “Using metalevel techniques in a flexible toolkit for CSCW applications”. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 5, 2 (Jun. 1998), Pages 109 – 155. Jeri Edwards. “3-Tier Client/Server at Work”. Pub. John Wiley, 1997. Jacob Harris and Vivek Sarkar. “Lightweight object-oriented shared variables for distributed applications on the Internet”. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, 1998, Pages 296 – 309. Nigel Hinds, Chinya V. Ravishankar. “Managing Metadata for Distributed Information Servers”. Proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'98), published by the IEEE, 1998. Nicholas Kassem. “Designing Enterprise Applications with the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition”. Pub. Addison-Wesley, 2000. Oscar Luiz Monteiro de Farias and Luiz Má C. P. M. de Farias. “Distributed information system on an Internet/intranet environment (DISI2E)”.Proceedings of the eighth ACM symposium on Advances in geographic information systems, 2000, Pages 197 – 198. Julio C. Navas and Michael Wynblatt. “The network is the database: data management for highly distributed systems”. To be published in: ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of Data on Management of data, 2001. Okada, R.; Eun-Seok Lee; Shiratori, N. “Agent-based approach for information gathering on highly distributed and heterogeneous environment”. Proceedings of the 1996 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS '96), published by the IEEE. Robert Orfali and Dan Harkey. “Client/Server Programming with JAVA and CORBA”. Pub. John Wiley, 1998. Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey and Jeri Edwards. “Instant CORBA”. Pub. John Wiley, 1997. Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey and Jeri Edwards. “The Essential Distributed Objects Survival Guide, 2nd Edition”. Pub. John Wiley, 1996. Owen de Kretser and Alistair Moffat. “Methodologies for Distributed Information Retrieval”. Proceedings of the The 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, published by the IEEE, 1998. Andreas Paepcke, Chen-Chuan K. Chang, Terry Winograd and Héctor García-Molina. “Interoperability for digital libraries worldwide”. Commun. ACM 41, 4 (Apr. 1998), Pages 33 – 42. Ahmed Saleh and George R. R. Justo. “A configuration-oriented framework for distributed multimedia applications”. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM symposium on Applied computing 2000 (volume 1), 2000, Pages 278 -280. Wolfgang Theilmann and Kurt Rothermel. “Disseminating Mobile Agents for Distributed Information Filtering”. Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Agent Systems and Applications Third International Symposium on Mobile Agents, published by the IEEE, 1998. Edgar Weippl. “Building secure knowledge bases: combining Java agents and Dbagents”. To be published in: Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents, 2001. Jinxi Xu and W. Bruce Croft. “Cluster-based language models for distributed retrieval”. Proceedings of the 22nd annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, 1999, Pages 254 – 261. Zhili Zhang and William Perrizo. “Distributed query processing using active networks”. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM symposium on Applied computing 2000 (volume 1), 2000, Pages 374 – 380