MEMPHIS: A mobile agent-based system for enabling acquisition of multilingual content and providing flexible format internet premium services

Mobile Agent technology is an interesting concept for large network-based system structures. In this paper we describe a Java-based agent environment which integrates agent execution platforms into World Wide Web servers promoting a world wide infrastructure for Mobile Agents. This system has been developed within the framework of MEMPHIS IST project, which involves the definition, development and validation of a new system for commercially significant multilingual premium services, focused on thin clients such as mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants, etc. The concept relies on the extraction of multilingual information from various web-based content sources in different formats. The system is composed by three different Modules, namely the Acquisition, the Transformation and the Distribution Module. The content acquisition is based on dynamic user profiles. The acquired content is transformed into a meta-representation, which enables content storage independent both of source and destination format and language. The output format is based on the requirements of employed thin client terminals and the output document is distributed via the appropriate networks. The end-user receives the required information as premium services via the chosen output medium. The system supports both pull and push services. An evaluation of the system is also presented. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1383-7621/$ see front matter 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserv doi:10.1016/j.sysarc.2005.05.007 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +30 210 7722558; fax: +30 210 772534. E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Papadakis).