In-Depth Course 6132:

Intelligent Information Agents for the Internet and Web

Vertiefungsvorlesung
Universität des Saarlandes, FR 6.2 Informatik,
Lehrstuhl Künstliche Intelligenz, Prof. Dr. Jörg Siekmann
Sommersemester 2004 (19.4.2004 - 23.7.2004)

Attention: 
Date and Location:

Friday, 11am - 1pm, Building 45, Course Room HS3/Freitags 11:00 - 13:00, Gebäude 45, Hörsaal 3

Credits: 4 marks
  1. Freie Leistungspunkte (unbenoteter Schein) 4 bei Anwesenheit in allen Vorlesungen mit maximal 2 Fehlzeiten (ab 30.4.04); Anwesenheitslisten werden ausgelegt.
  2. Für 4 Pflichtpunkte (benoteter Schein) ist zusätzlich eine mündliche Prüfung zum Vorlesungsstoff erfolgreich zu absolvieren; Reguläre Termine für mündliche Prüfung für den Zeitraum Mitte September bis Mitte Oktober 2004 sind n.V.
Constraints:
  1. Approval of 4 normal marks/grades if all lectures have been attended according to attendance lists (maximum of 2 absences, valid from 30.4.04).
  2. Approval of 4 deposit marks/grades if, in addition, an oral examination has been passed; regular examination dates (in the period of mid of september until mid of october) by appointment with the lecturer.
Lecturer:
Dr. Matthias Klusch
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI, NB Room +1.26)
Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
klusch@dfki.de, phone: +49-681-302-5297
www.dfki.de/~klusch/

Course Syllabus

An information agent is a computational software entity that has access to one or multiple, heterogeneous, and distributed data and information sources; proactively searches for, mediates, and maintains relevant information on behalf of its human users or other agents, preferably just-in-time. In other words, it is managing and overcoming the difficulties associated with information overload in the open and exponentially growing Internet and Web. Depending on the application and tasks at hand information agents may collaborate in open, networked data and information environments to provide added value to a variety of applications in different domains.
This course presents basic and advanced concepts, methods, and systems of intelligent information agents. After a brief introduction into the domain, we survey prominent approaches to searching relevant information on the Internet and Web, including methods and techniques from information retrieval, hyperlink analysis, local and adaptive Web search, as well as social filtering. We then turn to selected approaches to intelligent service mediation via middle agents on the Internet, and particularly comment on the relationship between information agents and Web services. For this purpose, we discuss the conventional Web service framework exemplified by the triple SOAP/WSDL/UDDI, and actual research work on its expected successor in the future Semantic Web, OWL-S (formerly DAML-S). Finally, we take a brief look at methods for negotiating game-theoretically stable coalitions between rational information agents in open environments.

The course is designed for graduate students of Computer Science, with focus on Artificial Intelligence.
All lectures of the course will be given in English. All slides are in English, and
available (on this page) for downloading ca 2 hours after each lecture.

Introduction slides date
Software Agents in Brief; Internet and Web; Information;
Intelligent Information Agents 		lecture 1
(pdf, 808kb)
23.4.04

 
Searching for Relevant Information
 slides
 date
Text Information Retrieval
- Basic concepts and models; pre-processing
- Query processing, expansion, relevance
- Performance evaluation
lecture 2
(pdf, 475kb)
30.4.04
Web Search
- Search engines, spiders
- Hyperlink analysis: Basics; PageRank, HITS, SALSA
- Meta search engines
- Local and structured Web search 		 

lecture 3
(pdf, 880kb)

7.5.04
Web Search and Recommendation
- Adaptive Web search (InfoSpiders)
- MAUT based recommendation
- Recommendation based on probabilistic text categorization
- Collaborative recommendation/Social filtering
- Content-based recommendation (LIBRA)
- Content-boosted collaborative recommendation (CBCF)
- Selected examples of visualizing recommended information

lecture 4
(pdf zipped,  1.9Mb)

14.5.04


28.5.04


4.6.04

Web Sources and Information Agents
 slides
 date
Web Data Semantics
- Descriptive metadata
- Semantic metadata (XML, RDF, RDFS), Semantic Web
Locating and Accessing of Data and Services (JDBC, Jini)
lecture 5
(pdf, 888kb)
4.6.04
18.6.04

Web Services and Information Agents
 slides 
 date 
Web Services      
- Framework; SOAP; WSDL; UDDI
- Web Services and Information Agents
lecture 6
(pdf, 314kb)
25.6.04
Intelligent Service Mediation
- Middle Agents; Cooperative Information Systems w/ Middle Agents
- Example: RETSINA + Application
- Knowledge-based Service Matchmaking using LARKS
lecture 7
(pdf, 703kb)

25.6.04
2.7.04
Semantic Web Services        
- Semantic Web Service Description in OWL-S
- OWL-S Service Matching Example
lecture 8
(pdf, 4.5Mb)

2.7.04
9.7.04

Coalitions of Information Agents slides date
Coalition Theories: Basics; Stability concepts
 Static Coalition Algorithms for Rational Information Agents:  BSCA, KCA
lecture 9
(pdf, 263kb)
9.7.04
16.7.04
Advances in Coalition Forming Between Information Agents
- Dynamic Coalition Forming (DCF-S Scheme and Algorithms; Application)
- Algorithms for Secure, and Trusted Coalition Forming
lecture 10
(pdf, 497kb)
16.7.04

The course bases on tutorials, and courses given by the lecturer at the Free University of Amsterdam in the years 2000 - 2002.

Relevant Literature

Introduction
  1. Wooldridge, M. (1999): Intelligent Agents. Chapter 1 in Weiss, G. (ed.): Multiagent Systems - A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press.  ISBN 0-262-23203-0
  2. Klusch, M. (2001): Information Agent Technology for the Internet: A Survey. Journal on Data and Knowledge Engineering, Special Issue on Intelligent Information Integration, D. Fensel (Ed.), Vol. 36(3), Elsevier Science.
Searching for Relevant Information
  1. Baeza-Yates, R.; Ribeiro-Neto, B. (1999): Modern Information Retrieval. ACM Press. ISBN 0-201-39829-X
  2. Henzinger, M. (2001): Hyperlink Analysis for the Web. Journal IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Press.
  3. Kleinberg, J.M. (1999): Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment. Journal of the ACM, vol. 46(5): 604-632, ACM Press.
  4. Pant, G.; Menczer, F. (2002): MySpiders: Evolve Your Own Intelligent Web Crawlers. Journal Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, vol 5(2): 221-230, Kluwer Academic.
Services and Information Agents
  1. Klusch, M.; Sycara, K. (2001): Brokering and Matchmaking for Coordination of Agent Societies: A Survey. In: Coordination of Internet Agents, A. Omicini et al. (eds.), Coordination of Internet Agents: Models, Technologies, and Applications. Springer, ISBN 3-540-41613-7.
  2. Sycara, K.; Widoff, S.; Klusch, M.; Lu, J. (2002): LARKS: Dynamic Matchmaking Among Heterogeneous Software Agents in Cyberspace. Journal on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, vol 5 (2), p. 173 - 204, Kluwer Academic Press.
  3. Chappell, D.A.; Jewell, T. (2002): Java Web Services. O'Reilly. ISBN 0-596-00269-6
  4. Fensel, D.; Hendler, J.; Lieberman, H.; Wahlster, W. (2003) Eds.: Spinning the Semantic Web - Bringing the World Wide Web to its Full Potential. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-06232-1
  5. OWL-S: www.daml.org
Coalitions of Rational Information Agents
  1. Holler, M.J.; Illing, G. (2000): Einführung in die Spieltheorie. Kapitel 6: Koalitionsspiele. 4. Auflage, Springer. ISBN 3-540-66831-4
  2. Klusch, M., Gerber, A. (2002): Dynamic Coalition Formation Among Rational Agents. Journal IEEE Intelligent Systems, 17(3), IEEE Press.