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As the Internet grows, more virtual stores are selling goods
on the Internet. With the explosive growth in the number of
virtual stores and goods information, customers are already
experiencing difficulties in searching for goods information
satisfying their needs. Searching can not be accomplished with
one single query. To conduct an integrated search, data
translation will be a problem because virtual stores may use
their own data format to store goods information. The
characteristics of goods may also vary in different goods
categories. Searching by the keyword or simple metadata search
can not satisfy customer needs to find goods information about
various goods categories. The objective of this work is to
develop a flexible search architecture to enable users to easily
search for various goods information on the Internet. To carry
out the goal, we propose a three-level metadata architecture to
make Internet search for goods information more convenient. The
metadata is able to facilitate resource-discovery and format
translation, and to provide information about attributes of a
goods category. The metadata architecture forms the basis of
Internet search for goods information. The proposed search
architecture is composed of multiple agents. Each agent is
dedicated to specified function which utilizes the metadata to
cooperate the search. By using the three-level metadata
architecture and the agent technology, an integrated search for
heterogeneous goods information located in various virtual
stores can be performed effectively. The proposed system is also
flexible to support diverse attributes of goods categories
enabling customers to conduct search conveniently.
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