An agent-based matchmaker

Service discovery is the process of localizing resources and services available in large scale open and distributed systems. In a distributed and redundant system as the Web, it is necessary, beside localizing services, to filter them in order to obtain those which are best for the activities for which they have been requested. By the term matchmaker we mean a software entity which monitors services availability, maintains an updated file of all useful information for using services and possibly ensures a quality choice of them. In this paper we propose an architecture for an agent-based matchmaker. The matchmaker that takes part in the request process has been developed by using the potential of a quality model based on suitable parameters to ensure the proper choice of a service to be consumed in a specific application domain. A case study in biomedical domain is presented. This case study is concerned with the development of a multi-agent system including a Bio-certifier in support of service discovery activity.