On Programming Information Agent Systems - An Integrated Hotel Reservation Service as Case Study

This paper presents our integrated hotel reservation service. Using it as a case study, we discuss the design and implementation of agent-based information systems. Taking a system as a whole, we consider not only information agents but also their interface to human users and external information sources. In particular, our focus is on the interaction behavior, which can be observed both in interactions between agents and in interactions between agents and these interface components. We show that both kinds of interaction are coordinated by the same protocol. Using our implemented hotel reservation service system, we illustrate exemplarily how this understanding can be used to systematically design and validate interaction mechanism. We explore the possibility to facilitate the rapid prototyping of information agent systems using an interaction behavior editor. Moreover, by giving insight into some details of our hotel service system, we exemplify where the difficulties in implementing information agent systems are and thus infrastructural support are desirable.