Performance-sensitive service provision in active digital libraries

An agent-based architecture of an active digital library (DL) is first described, to illustrate how electronic service provision can be supported through the use of agents. The use of mobile agents is presented as a key enabler for allowing services to be combined from a variety of providers. Load balancing approaches are then used to illustrate how particular performance criteria can be achieved in service provision. Extrapolation of the approach to the general service-oriented computing model is briefly discussed.