Authors: Ion Constantinescu, Boi Faltings

Title: Efficient Matchmaking and Directory Services

Date: 2002-11-18 11:54:48

Abstract:
It has been widely recognised that matchmaking is an important
component of heterogeneous multiagent systems. Several researchers have
developed powerful techniques for the matchmaking problem in general.
There are also specific representation of agent capabilities such as
DAML-S which provide a more specific framework for matchmaking.

Most approaches to matchmaking have assumed a sequential search for
an agent with matching capabilities. This may become intractable when
the number of available agents gets large. In this paper, we consider
how matchmaking can be developed into agent directories that can be
searched and maintained efficiently. Our main contribution is to show
how matchmaking with DAML-S specifications can be integrated with efficient
methods for searching and maintaining balanced directory trees. We also
report on experimental results using an implementation based on generalised
search trees.

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