XIB: eXtensible Information Broker

Broker Building Tutorial
What is an Information Broker?

 

Definition

    An Information Broker is a kind of information agent that can autonomously search, gather and integrate information on behalf of a user.

 

Example

  Suppose you want to buy books from the web. There are various websites that provide such services, notably www.amazon.com based in the United States and www.chaptersglobe.com based in Canada.  Your objective is to find a website that provides the best price for the books you want to buy.   You browse the two website that provides the best proce for the book you want to buy.  You can browse the two websites, search the prices of the books in each website, and go to the currency converter service provided at www.xe.net/currency to convert the currence from USD to CAD for each book.  You realize that you have to shift back and fourth between different websites and use a pencil and paper to draw up a matrix to do the comparisons.

    There should be a better way to do this.  An information broker website will automatically collect information form different places and find a suitable solution for you based on user-defined criteria.   In particular, the user specifies the criteria for selecting a commodity and the broker presents a prioritized listing of products from different vendors.

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