ViSMA: extendible, mobile-agent based services for the materialization and maintenance of personalized and shareable Web views

ViSMA (Views Supported by Mobile Agents) is a prototype set of extendible mobile-agent based services that allow the definition, materialization, maintenance and sharing of views created over remote Web-accessible databases. The system's primary goal is to support mobile clients carrying lightweight devices of various connectivity and resources such as portable computers and PDAs by being completely deployed over mobile agent technology. In this paper we propose a multi-tier architecture on which the system is built and we present the system's features, which include view mobility, shareable and personalized view creation and customizable, automated view monitoring and updating. The system has been fully implemented and tested using three alternative client types.