Vertiefungsvorlesung/In-Depth Course 6139:

Intelligent Information Agents for Internet and Web

Vertiefungsvorlesung zur Stammvorlesung "Künstliche Intelligenz"
von Prof. Dr. Jörg Siekmann an der Universität des Saarlandes, FR 6.2 Informatik,
Lehrstuhl Künstliche Intelligenz, im Sommersemester 2005 (11.4.-15.7.2005)

Date and Location:

Weekly on friday, 11:15 am - 1 pm, starting on April 22, 2005.
Lecture room 003 (Hörsaal 003), Building 45

Please note:
Credits (Leistungspunkte):  4

Approval of normal attendance (unbenoteter "Sitzschein") if all lectures have been attended according to attendance lists (maximum of 2 absences allowed), or
Approval of 4 deposit marks (benoteter Schein) if, in addition, an oral examination by appointment with the lecturer has been passed.
If you want to upgrade your approval of normal attendance to 4 deposit marks, please make an appointment with the lecturer for an oral examination (focus on 2 lectures of your choice, 30 minutes).
This course offered no exercises.

Lecturer:
Dr. Matthias Klusch
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
www.dfki.de/~klusch/


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 the Web, including methods and techniques for content-based, link-directed, and structured search, as well as various means of recommendation such as social filtering. We then turn our attention to the vision of the semantic Web, and basic means of searching by use of semantic Web agents. In addition, we also comment on the relationship between intelligent information agents and both conventional and semantic Web services. For this purpose, we start with briefly introducing the conventional Web service framework as it is exemplified by the triple SOAP-WSDL-UDDI, and surveying  approaches to mediating such services in the Internet by use of middle agents such as matchmakers and brokers. Likewisely, we show how semantic Web services are described in, for example, OWL-S or WSMO, and discovered by semantic Web matchmaker agents. Finally, we discuss selected methods for negotiating game-theoretically stable coalitions between information agents that charge users for any item or service they provide in order to increase monetary profits.

The course is designed for graduate students of Computer Science, with focus on Artificial Intelligence, and will be given in English.
The complete course material (slides) is in English and will be made available on this page for downloading in advance.
Please check regularly whether you have the latest update of the slides.
Please note that the indicacted schedule of lectures is preliminary and subject to changes.

Course Material and Schedule
[D] = w/ short video demonstration(s)

Introduction slides       
date
Software Agents and Multi-Agent Systems in Very Brief
Internet, Web, and Information
Intelligent Information Agents
 lecture 1
(zip/pdf, 956kb)
22.4.
 
Searching the Web
 slides       
date
Content-Based Search
- Basics of text information retrieval
- Text pre-processing; query processing and expansion
- Relevance, and performance evaluation
lecture 2
(pdf, 335kb)
29.4.
Link-Directed Search
- Hyperlink analysis (PageRank, DPageRank, HITS) [D]
- Meta search engines
- Adaptive Web search (InfoSpiders/MySpiders) [D]
Local Structured Search
- WebSQL		  

lecture 3
(pdf, 974kb) 


6.5.
Recommendation
- Collaborative recommendation [D]
- Multi-attribute utility theory based recommendation [D]
- Probabilistic text categorization based recommendation
- Adaptive content-based recommendation (LIBRA)
- Content-boosted collaborative recommendation (CBCF)
Visualizing Recommendations
- Selected examples [D]

lecture 4
(zip/pdf, 2M)


13.5.



20.5.

Searching the Semantic Web
 slides       
 date 
The Semantic Web
- Metadata, XML
- Semantic Web Vision, Description Logics
- RDF, RDFS; RDQL
- Semantic Web Ontology Language OWL; OWL-QL

lecture 5
(pdf, 861kb)

20.5.

3.6.

Web Services and Agents
 slides       
 date 
Web Service Framework
- SOAP + WSDL + UDDI
- SOA and Agents
 lecture 6
(pdf, 344kb)

10.6.

Mediating Data and Services
 slides       
 date 
Location of Data and Services
- Middleware (Jini, Corba)
- Middle Agents (InfoSleuth, RETSINA + LARKS)  [D]
Access To Data Sources
- Example (JDBC)
lecture 7
(pdf, 903kb)

17.6.

Semantic Web Services and Agents slides          date     
Semantic Web Service Frameworks
- OWL-S and                       
  OWLS/UDDI matchmaker, OWLS-MX matchmaker
- WSMO and
  WSMO service location approach
SWS composition planning
 lecture 8
(zip/pdf, 2.17M)

lecture 9
(pdf, 405kb)

1.7.

8.7.

Coalitions of Information Agents slides           
 date          
Introduction to Cooperative Game Theory
- Basics; Stability concepts (coalition theories)
Negotiation of Service Agent Coalitions
- Bilateral Shapley value stable coalition forming (BSCA); Example
- Kernel stable coalition forming (KCA); Example

lecture 10
(pdf, 264kb)

15.7.

The course bases on courses given by the lecturer at the University of the Saarland in the summer term 2004, and
the Free University of Amsterdam in the years 2000 - 2002.

Selected Course 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 the Web
  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.
Searching the Semantic Web
  1. 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
  2. T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, O. Lassila: The Semantic Web. Scientific American, May 2001.
  3. I. Horrocks, P.F. Patel-Schneider, and F. van Harmelen: From SHIQ and RDF to OWL: The Making of a Web Ontology Language. Journal of Web Semantics, vol. 1, Elsevier, 2004
  4. R. Fikes, P. Hayes, and I. Horrocks: OWL-QL - a language for deductive query answering on the Semantic Web. Journal of Web Semantics, vol. 2, Elsevier, 2004
Web Services and Information Agents
  1. Singh, M.; Huhns, M. (2005): Service-Oriented Computing - Semantics, Processes, Agents. John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-470-09148-7.
  2. Alonso, G.; Casati, F.; Kuno, H.; Machiraju, V. (2004):  Web Services - Concepts, Architectures and Applications. Springer, ISBN 3-540-44008-9
  3. Chappell, D.A.; Jewell, T. (2002): Java Web Services. O'Reilly. ISBN 0-596-00269-6
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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
  7. OWL-S: www.daml.org
Web Service Mediation
  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. 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.