exercise 14

1. What is a spider? What does it do?

The program which reads the web pages present on a website and identifies other pages by using the hypertext links on the web page is called Spider, also referred to as webcrawler because it crawls through the web pages. The web crawling technique is utilized to show results from different websites by search engines like Alta Vista. Along with that, it is a type of software agent that initiates with a list of URLs and tracks the hyperlinks on those URLs to open those other pages. Links are added to its list of URLs by it called crawler frontier. In accordance to a set of policies, the URLs from this crawler frontier are visited recursively.

Reference :

Web crawler. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler


2. Differentiate the various types of software agents.

The software which acts as an authority to take decision as to which action is correct or appropriate for the user or other program in relationship of agency is called as software agent.
The various types of software agents are buyer agent, user agent, monitoring and surveillance agent and data mining agent.

i. Buyer agent

Buyer agent, also known as shopping bots, is the one which finds out information about goods and services from the internet. It works very efficiently for commodity products like books, electrical components etc.

ii. User agent

User agent, also known as personal agent, is the one which takes actions on your behalf. Some of the actions it can perform are as follows:

· It can find out information on different subjects.

· It can check emails, sort them in order of preference and give alerts on receiving important emails.

· It can automatically fill forms on the internet and store information for future reference.

· It can scan web pages and highlight text which contains the important part.

· It can play as opponent in computer games or can also patrol game areas.

· It can bring together customized news reports. Newshub and CNN are amongst several versions of these.

iii. Monitoring and surveillance Agent:

Monitoring and Surveillance Agents is an agent which is used to make observations and report on equipments, mostly computer systems. This agent can perform actions like:

· keeping records of inventory levels of the company,

· watching competitor’s prices and transmit them to the company,

· Observing stock changes by insider trading and rumors etc.

iv. Data Mining Agent:

Data Mining agent is an agent which makes use of information technology to search patterns and trends, from various different sources, in a large amount of information. In order to search the required information, the user can sort through this information.

Reference :

Software Agent Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent

3. Identify various activities in e-commerce where software agents are currently in use.

The various activities in e-commerce where software agents are used are as follows:

i. Buyer Agent:

A good example of a shopping bot is Amazon.com or eBay.com. Here, on the basis of goods and products that we are buying now or have bought earlier, the website will give a list of products that we might like to buy. The list offers items according to our taste and choice based on our searches or products we have previously bought.

ii. User Agent:

Yahoo.com, Google.com, msn.com can be examples of user agents. According to preference, the mails can be customized. They can also play games, assemble news etc.

iii. Monitoring and Surveillance Agent :

Example, An agent with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory which checks planning, inventory, and schedules equipment ordering to cut down costs, as well as food storage facilities. The track of the configuration of each computer connected to the network of computers can be kept by the monitoring carried out by these agents.

iv. Data Mining Agent:

An example of data mining agent can be an agent developed by a corporation to analyse economic trends. It will alert the management in case of any changes like the consumers becoming more conservative. Hence, with this information, the management can make proper plans and take decisions on how to produce, market and sell its products. This will make all the processes from production to sale very efficient.

Reference:

Data Mining Agent. Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining_agents

Software Agent. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent