Using multi-agent system for business applications in multilingual ontologies

Abstract

In e-business, ontology technology is used for e-commerce and e-services. The ontologies are specifications of syntax and semantics of information, which provide a shared vocabulary to facilitate online services. For some requests, multiple ontologies are required to solve a problem, like for e-tourism. However, there are problems with using several ontologies. For example, finding and using the ontologies depends on the language used in the ontologies, and matching techniques. The matching includes word correspondence to the users' request and the equivalence between the ontologies. The matching is difficult due to differences between ontologies resulting from the lack of standards and development guidelines. This paper presents a multi-agent system wherein the agents use the users' request to search for multilingual ontologies. From the search results, the system facilitates communication between the users input and the ontologies to accomplish the request, which can be booking a train ticket or an event. Meta-agents keep track of the agents and manage the user-system communication. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.