Collecting Data with Mobile Agents

Consider this typical situation: You have a central data server that has to collect data from several computers.

Examples

• A WWW search engine collects data from web servers all over the world.
• A central information server in your company collects data from different departments.
• Data mining on a large distributed data base.

Conventional Data Collection

A central server collects data from several computers.

Disadvantages

• The central server needs all the data from the other computers before it can do some processing.

Data Collection with distributed search engines

All computers run a kind of distributed search engine , for example Harvest. The local search engines process data locally and transfer the result to the central server.

Advantages

• Low network traffic, because the local computers do data processing before it is transfered the central server.

• A lot of maintainance for the local search engines is needed.
• When a new version of the search engine comes up ist must be installed on every local server.
• Unflexible when the search algorithm changes.

Data Collection with Mobile Agents

A mobile agent travels around the net. On each computer it processes the data and sends the results back to the central server.

Advantages

• Low network traffic because the agents do data processing locally.
• When the search algorithm changes a new agent is send on his way. No need for updates on the local computers.
• Usable in an unrelieable network environment.