- From: David Martin <martin@AI.SRI.COM>
- Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:43:52 -0700
- To: Jyotishman Pathak <jyotishman@gmail.com>
- CC: "Public-Sws-Ig@W3. Org" <public-sws-ig@w3.org>, semantic-web@w3.org, Jyotishman Pathak <jpathak@cs.iastate.edu>
Jyotishman Pathak wrote: > Hi, > > Pardon me if this is a very naive question, but someone can please tell > me crisply the difference(s) between software agents and (semantic) Web > services? I have been trying to find out a comparison between them over > the Web and came across the following: > http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=873262, which unfortunately did > not suffice my query to its entirety. > > I look forward to your inputs. > > Thanks, > - Jyoti Hi Jyoti - I don't think you are likely to find a single crisp delineation that everyone would agree too. Clearly there is a great deal of commonality between agents and SWS, in terms of objectives and issues. In my view agents is a broader field, which pretty much subsumes SWS, except of course for the connection of SWS with Web Service and Semantic Web standards. SWS has a strong focus on describing the provider, which derives from the provider-centric focus of WSDL descriptions. SWS also is focused more on external characterization of behavior and interactions, and somewhat less on internal architecture and characteristics of individual agents. Also somewhat less on teamwork / collaboration. Both of course have matchmaking and planning/composition as primary concerns. Some people have claimed that SWS is providing a natural infrastructure for agents that hopefully will become widely adopted and possibly standardized. Some people prefer to view agents and services as synonymous, in principle. (That is, anything that's an agent could be deployed as a service and any service can be conceived as an agent.) Others prefer to think of services as simpler things than agents, but they can be used by agents (as clients), and they may be supported by agents (as behind-the-scenes part of the provider infrastructure). There's a series of workshops (WSABE / SOCABE) that has brought together these two areas. You'll probably find some discussion of this distinction in some of the papers: http://www.agentus.com/WSABE2003/ http://agentus.com/WSABE2004/ http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/conferences/socabe2005/ http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/conferences/socabe2006/ Regards, David Martin
Received on Wednesday, 25 October 2006 19:44:15 UTC