1. What is a spider? What does it do?
A spider is a piece of software which designed to go through or "crawl" through a specific medium. These mediums could be as simple as a text file, a database table or as complex as the internet. In the internet, web-crawlers /spiders are used in search for new websites/ pages. A web-crawler visits crawls through the internet by visiting sites and links to and from the sites. on finding a new web page or website, the web-crawler indexed and cataloged their findings for future rapid retrieval. Search companies e.g. Google use spiders to keep being updated on these new sites and to find updates on the known sites to increase the accuracy of their search results
2. Differentiate the various types of software agents.
A software agent is a a software entity which functions continuously and autonomously
in a particular environment, often inhabited by other agents and processes (Shoham 1997). Software agents differ from conventional software in that they are long-lived, semi-autonomous, proactive, and adaptive.
These include:
Intelligent agents are agents that in particular exhibits some aspect of Artificial Intelligence, such as learning and reasoning.
Autonomous agents - agents that are able to adapt, giving them the ability to modify their approaches in achieving their objectives.
Distributed agents - agents that are being executed on physically distinct computers over distribution network.
Multi-agent systems - distributed agents that do not have the capabilities to achieve an objective alone and thus must communicate with other agents.
Mobile agents - agents that can relocate their execution onto different processors, hence: mobile.
in a particular environment, often inhabited by other agents and processes (Shoham 1997). Software agents differ from conventional software in that they are long-lived, semi-autonomous, proactive, and adaptive.
These include:
Intelligent agents are agents that in particular exhibits some aspect of Artificial Intelligence, such as learning and reasoning.
Autonomous agents - agents that are able to adapt, giving them the ability to modify their approaches in achieving their objectives.
Distributed agents - agents that are being executed on physically distinct computers over distribution network.
Multi-agent systems - distributed agents that do not have the capabilities to achieve an objective alone and thus must communicate with other agents.
Mobile agents - agents that can relocate their execution onto different processors, hence: mobile.
3. Identify various activities in e-commerce where software agents are currently in use.
Buyer agents or shopping bots are used in many eCommerce shops, for example Amazon.com .The sopping bot provides a list of books recommendations based on your buying history.
User or personal agents example at jobdb.com , which sends email notifications about the current available jobs in the market according to your personal resume data.
Monitoring and Surveillance agents are used in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which monitors inventory, planning and scheduling equipment ordering to keep monitoring and surveillance costs down.
Data Mining agents are commonly used in credit card companies to provide them with information on consumer's spending habits and tendencies. These information gathered by the miners could be priceless to the businesses in forecasting the market behavior.
References:
Shoham, Y. 1997. An Overview of Agent-oriented Programming. In Software Agents, ed
J. M. Bradshaw. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press.
J. M. Bradshaw. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler accessed on 28/05/2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent accessed on 28/05/2010
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