Information Retrieval in Distributed Environments Based on Context-Aware, Proactive Documents

Abstract

In this position paper we propose a document-centric middleware component called 'Living Documents' to support context-aware information retrieval in distributed communities. A 'Living Document' acts as a micro server for a document which contains computational services, a semi-structured knowledge repository to uniformly store and access context-related information, and finally the document’s digital content. Our initial prototype of 'Living Documents' is based on the concept of mobile agents and implemented in Java and XML.

The project "Verbund Virtuelles Labor" (www.vvl.de) is supported by the Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst of the state Baden-Württemberg, Germany.