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T. Eiter, M. Fink:
"Answer Set Programming for Information Agents";
Talk: Dagstuhl Seminar on Programming Multi Agent Systems based on Logic (Dagstuhl Seminar 02481), Schloss Dagstuhl, Wadern, Germany; 2002-11-24 - 2002-11-29.

Today, the search for specific information on the World Wide Web faces several problems, which arise on the one hand from the vast number of information sources available, and on the other hand from their intrinsic heterogeneity, since standards are missing. A promising approach for solving the complex problems emerging in this context is the use of multi-agent systems of information agents, which cooperatively solve advanced information-retrieval problems. This requests for providing advanced capabilities, such as search and assessment of information sources, query planning, information merging and fusion, dealing with incomplete information, handling of inconsistency, and so on.

In this talk, our focus is on the role which answer set programming techniques can play in the realization of reasoning capabilities for information agents. In particular, we are interested to see in how they can be used, extended, and further developed for the needs of this domain of application. As an example task of information agents we consider the selection of relevant information sources in automated query answering and we present an approach for information-site selection, which is based on the answer set programming paradigm. We report experimental results obtained in a particular application domain, discuss advantages and drawbacks, and point out possible extensions and open issues.