A multi-agent system for cooperative document indexing and querying in distributed networked environments

In an age of rapidly changing work environments it is becoming increasingly the norm for project and research teams to be composed of individuals who are geographically distributed but connected for work purposes by high speed communication networks. In such environments there is a real need for automated support systems that facilitate the easy and effective sharing of work related documents and files among workgroup members. This paper presents a cooperative agent based solution known as MAIQS, which is an acronym for Multi-Agent Indexing and Query System. A MAIQS agent is installed on each team member's workstation where it takes on responsibilities for: building and dynamically maintaining indexes to specified user data; locating its counterpart agents on other machines; and supporting parallel queries across the community of agents. Such queries may utilise directly connected synchronous exchanges or (where firewalls necessitate) asynchronous email based exchanges. MAIQS, a 100% Java application, is presented here from a network computing perspective and its current implementation and future development examined.