Integrating software agents with multi-level metadata in support of heterogeneous product search

As the Internet grows, more virtual stores are selling products on the Internet. With the explosive growth of product information, customers are experiencing difficulties in searching for product information satisfying their needs. To conduct an integrated search, data translation will be a problem because virtual stores may use their own data format to store product information. The characteristics of product may also vary in different product categories. This work proposes an agent-oriented search system integrating with multilevel metadata to support effective search for heterogeneous product information. The proposed system enables users to search product information based on the attributes of various product categories. Moreover, the multi-level metadata is able to facilitate resource-discovery and format translation, and to flexibly model the definitions of diverse attributes for describing products in various product categories and data resources. With the multi-level metadata and the agent technology, an integrated search for heterogeneous product information located in various virtual stores can be performed effectively.