Agent Sourcebook: A Complete Guide to Desktop, Internet, and Intranet Agents

A practical guide to introducing agent technology into your business applications

Considered by many experts to be as important a development as the GUI, client/server technology, and object-oriented programming, intelligent agents promise to radically transform the way people work by the end of the century. But how capable are agents in their current form, and how practical are they for your company?

In this groundbreaking book, authors Caglayan and Harrison go beyond the hype and sci-fi scenarios to provide IS managers, developers, and corporate decision-makers with an accurate picture of what agents can and cannot do. They clearly explain the underlying technology, including knowledge representation, inferencing, and learning, and describe how agents can be used to improve efficiency while dramatically cutting the cost of doing work. Using dozens of real-life examples taken from businesses around the world, the authors join forces to:

• Carefully weigh the costs and benefits of introducing agents into your workplace.
• Explain how to integrate agents into existing software systems.
• Describe how to use agents on the Internet, intranets, and in electronic commerce.
• Provide a framework for developing and managing your own agents.
• Alert you to key security issues involved with agent technology.
• Assess virtually all commercially available products, including desktop agents, Web search agents, personalized information filtering and retrieval programs, intranet agents, database agents, and more