Agents and databases: friends or foes?

On first glance agent technology seems more like a hostile intruder into the database world. On the other hand, the two could easily complement each other, since agents carry out information processes whereas databases supply information to processes. Nonetheless, to view agent technology from a database perspective seems to question some of the basic paradigms of database technology, particularly the premise of semantic consistency of a database. The paper argues that the ensuing uncertainty in distributed databases can be modelled by beliefs, and develops the basic concepts for adjusting peer-to-peer databases to the individual beliefs in single nodes and collective beliefs in the entire distributed database.

[1]  André Schiper,et al.  Approaches to fault-tolerant and transactional mobile agent execution---an algorithmic view , 2004, CSUR.

[2]  Andreas Reuter,et al.  Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques , 1992 .

[3]  J. Hartmanis,et al.  Co-ordination in Artificial Agent Societies , 1999 .

[4]  Narain H. Gehani,et al.  Scalable Update Propagation in Epidemic Replicated Databases , 1996, EDBT.

[5]  D. M. Hutton,et al.  Multiagent Systems for Manufacturing Control A Design Methodology , 2006 .

[6]  Anne-Marie Kermarrec,et al.  Epidemic information dissemination in distributed systems , 2004, Computer.

[7]  Fausto Giunchiglia,et al.  Data Management for Peer-to-Peer Computing : A Vision , 2002, WebDB.

[8]  Hirofumi Katsuno,et al.  On the Difference between Updating a Knowledge Base and Revising It , 1991, KR.

[9]  Anne-Marie Kermarrec,et al.  From Epidemics to Distributed Computing , 2004 .

[10]  Hasan M. Jamil.  Belief reasoning in MLS deductive databases , 1999, SIGMOD '99.

[11]  Diomidis Spinellis,et al.  A survey of peer-to-peer content distribution technologies , 2004, CSUR.

[12]  Jia Wang,et al.  A survey of web caching schemes for the Internet , 1999, CCRV.

[13]  Judea Pearl,et al.  Belief Networks Revisited , 1993, Artif. Intell..

[14]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems John Wiley & Sons , 2002 .

[15]  H SchollMarc,et al.  Transactional information systems , 2001 .

[16]  R. Feynman,et al.  The Feynman Lectures on Physics Addison-Wesley Reading , 1963 .

[17]  David Garlan,et al.  Context is key , 2005, CACM.

[18]  Jacques Ferber,et al.  Multi-agent systems - an introduction to distributed artificial intelligence , 1999 .

[19]  Karl Aberer,et al.  Peer-to-peer information systems: concepts and models, state-of-the-art, and future systems , 2001, ESEC/FSE-9.

[20]  Peter van Emde Boas,et al.  SOFSEM 2004: Theory and Practice of Computer Science , 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[21]  Y. Wilks,et al.  Artificial Believers: The Ascription of Belief , 1991 .

[22]  M. Newman,et al.  Epidemics and percolation in small-world networks. , 1999, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[23]  Philip R. Cohen,et al.  Intentions in Communication , 1991, CL.

[24]  Avigdor Gal,et al.  A framework for modeling and evaluating automatic semantic reconciliation , 2005, The VLDB Journal.

[25]  Michael E. Bratman,et al.  What is intention , 1987 .

[26]  René Witte,et al.  Architektur von Fuzzy-Informationssystemen , 2002, VLDB 2002.

[27]  Peter C. Lockemann,et al.  Flexibility through Multiagent Systems: Solution or Illusion? , 2004, SOFSEM.

[28]  Gerhard Weiss,et al.  Multiagent systems: a modern approach to distributed artificial intelligence , 1999 .

[29]  Jonathan Goldstein,et al.  Relaxed currency and consistency: how to say "good enough" in SQL , 2004, SIGMOD '04.

[30]  H. J. Herrmann,et al.  Scaling of the propagation of epidemics in a system of mobile agents , 2004 .

[31]  Barbara Messing,et al.  An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems , 2002, Künstliche Intell..

[32]  Ken Satoh,et al.  Speculative computation with multi-agent belief revision , 2002, AAMAS '02.