Using agents and ontologies for application development on the semantic web

the semantic web provides access to heterogeneous, distributed information, enabling software products to mediate between user needs and the information sources available. agents are one of the most promising technologies for the development of semantic web software products. however, agent-based technologies will not become widespread until there are adequate infrastructures for the development of semantic multi-agent systems (mas). some challenges, such as turning software agents into practical abstractions for dealing with ontologies, taking advantage of the distributed nature of the web to create distributed agents and making a seamless integration with existing web tools, e.g. the browser, still need to be addressed. this paper describes the main features of the semanticore framework, an agent infrastructure to develop semantic mas. a look at a benchmark semantic web application illustrates the semanticore potential as an infrastructure for the deployment of semantic agent applications.