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DSS Access on the WWW: An Intelligent Agent Prototype
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Gregg, Dawn G. |
| Copyright Year | 1998 |
| Abstract | This paper describes a prototype DSS Discovery Agent, an intelligent agent designed to facilitate access to DSS deployed using an Open DSS protocol. The agent utilizes a set of specialized HTML metainformation headers to determine whether a given Web site contains a Decision Support System (DSS) and whether that DSS meets user defined requirements. Introduction and Background Today, technologies like the World Wide Web WWW and corporate Intranets have made it possible for people to share vast and varied information with other individuals both within their organization and in the world at large. At present the Internet provides access to thousands of gigabytes each of software, books and papers, raw scientific data, menus, meeting minutes, advertisements, video and audio recordings, and more. Increasingly, competitive firms are tapping this information source to meet their decision support needs. However, coordinating and effectively using all of this information is a monumental task, that can take time, cost money and lead to information overload. Intelligent search engines currently are being used to automatically classify and index the collections of data. But, these search engines cannot classify resources on the Internet that are not text based. This leaves decision-makers without adequate mechanisms for discovering a wide range of resources that are potentially useful to business people. These resources include graphical information, software, intelligent agents, and decision support systems. One method that has been proposed for improving discovery of non-text resources is Web page labeling. This technique uses labels or metainformation to identify the content and quality of non-text information. These labels must be developed to provide the information necessary for specific domains. One such specialized labeling scheme has been developed for decision support systems (DSS). In 1995, Goul et al. proposed a protocol suite that utilizes a set of specialized headers to provide basic information about a DSS to automated intelligent search agents. The metainformation headers are used to specify any information necessary to evaluate a DSS. The purpose of this paper is to present a prototype intelligent agent that allows automated discovery of DSS that are distributed using the Open DSS protocol. The DSS Discovery Agent is an artificial intelligence based expert system. It traverses links to a specifiable depth beginning at a URL passed as an argument. The intelligent agent identifies DSS and performs keyword filtering to determine if the DSS meets a set of end-user criteria. The Open DSS Protocol The Open DSS Protocol approach for DSS deployment allows DSS to be distributed on individual web pages, consistent with the way other types of data are currently being offered. It is a general protocol that provides facilitated access to DSS using existing Internet application layer protocols. It consists of two layers, the Metainformation Layer and the Transaction Layer. The advantage of an open protocol is that the automated intelligent search agents, like the DSS Discovery Agent, have the capability of finding any DSS compliant with the protocol. The DSS Discovery Agent retrieves the information contained in the Metainformation Layer of the protocol to determine if the DSS meets the user-specified requirements. This layer utilizes a set of specialized headers to provide basic information about the DSS to the automated intelligent search agents. The header information is in a consistent format so that the automated DSS Discovery Agents can filter the Web pages correctly. The basic information necessary for DSS metainformation includes the content type (DSS), a list of keywords, and a description of the DSS. The metainformation layer also contains parameters related to DSS functionality. These parameters were selected based model management research. The goal of much of this research has been to develop techniques to select or construct appropriate models to be run so as to provide the appropriate answer. To date there has been no universally agreed upon method for representing and specifying DSS models. However, at a minimum, a DSS representation scheme should include descriptions of the stimuli (inputs) and responses (outputs), state (data structures), and procedures (control structures). The OpenDSS protocol metainformation currently includes functional parameters related to the problem domain of the DSS, the solution options, the inputs, the outputs and assumptions made. The Open-DSS protocol also includes metainformation information on the resources required to execute the DSS. These include information on the hardware requirements (e.g., computing platform), software requirements (e.g., operating system or |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.public.asu.edu/~dgregg/T04_09.PDF |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://dawngregg.com/ucd/research/T04_09.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1482&context=amcis1998&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
