Introduction to the special issue on engineering semantic agent systems

Abstract

1. IntroductionIntegrating agent and semantic web technologiesin orderto extendthe abilityof programmes havelong been hailed as the panacea to serving usersmore efficiently and with less human intervention(Hendler, 2001). The idea was to significantlyaffect the performance of communicating multi-agent systems through utilization of web services(WS) and ontologies. The World Wide Webhas become prevalent and the semantic webhas matured to a great extent evolving throughindigenous data and protocol standards. Ontol-ogy-based applications have been on the rise andmajor enterprises are starting to take up thesemantic web technologies. However, the pace ofdevelopment in the semantic agent arena early inthis decade was nowhere near desirable. Weorganizedaworkshoponthetopicinconjunctionwith the 30th COMPSAC (2006) Annual Inter-national Computer Software and ApplicationsConference that took place in Chicago, Illinois,USA (ESAS, 2006). Thus the series of IEEEInternational Workshop on Engineering Seman-tic Agent Systems (ESAS) was born in 2006.Within months the ‘Special Issue on AI, Agents,and the Web’ appeared, paving the way forrecognition of interplay and for betterintegrationof the three branches (Hendler, 2006).Following the major success of the inauguralworkshop, the 2nd IEEE International Work-shop on ESAS took place in the bustling capitalof China (ESAS, 2007). All in proper perspective,ESAS 2007 was a tribute to its main theme,namely, ‘Applying Semantic Web Technologies inResearch and Development of Software Agents,Mobile Agents and Multi-Agent Systems’, contri-buting to the refinement of the concepts ofsemantic agent systems (SAS) and helping tobring forward better practices of engineeringthem.ThiswasfollowedupbyThe3rdIEEEInternational Workshop on ESAS which tookplace in Turku, the oldest provincial capital cityof Finland (ESAS, 2008).Theinterplayofsemanticwebtechnologiesandagent systems is promising a new dimension ofcapability in developing semantic-based multi-agent information systems. The ESAS Workshopseries aims at garnering the synergy of bothworlds by taking up the common research issue.The topics covered span a wide spectrum of boththeory and practice in the semantic web, agents,and AI, with due emphasis on the practicalaspects of certain specific topics, such as autono-mous semantic agents, context-aware intelligentagents, agents as semantic WS, software agents,mobile agents, agent architectures, multi-agentsystems, agent communities, cooperation andgoal seeking through sharing policy and ontol-ogy, safety and security in systems, and QoSissues. Effectingknowledgeengineeringasaprac-tice and expert systems in general are the primaryDOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0394.2011.00585.x