This documentation provides guidelines for advertising agents, finding agents, and performing other operations with the Matchmaker. Please address comments and questions to Pleiades.

The Matchmaker is an information agent that forges connections between agents that request services and agents that provide services. The Matchmaker system provides a mechanisms for advertising and unadvertising each agent's capabilities. An agent's registration information is stored as an "advertisement," which provides a short description of the agent, a sample query, input and output parameter declarations, and other constraints.

When the Matchmaker agent receives a query from a user or another software agent, it searches its dynamic database of "advertisements" for a registered agent that can fulfill the incoming request. The Matchmaker thus serves as a liason between an agent that requests services and an agent that can fulfill requests for services.

We have also implemented an online interface to the Matchmaker, called A-Match, that allows users to advertise, unadvertise, and query agents. A-Match is probably the easiest way to interact with the Matchmaker and to explore its functionalities. You are welcome to advertise your agents and query any of the agents that have been advertised.

The version of the Matchmaker used by the A-Match application is available for public use. It can be queried manually, through the A-Match web interface, or by deploying agents that communicate with the Matchmaker. This documentation is concerned with the latter method of using the Matchmaker.

Please feel free to ask questions, send suggestions and comments, and report bugs. In addition, please keep in mind that both the Matchmaker and the web interface are still under construction.