Abstract for Alec Segal Name: Alec Segal Organization: OneWabe E-mail: segala@mail.dnb.com Go to the bio

I had been working for a software startup company OneWave, Inc ( Watertown, MA) since it was founded in 1994 till the beginning of this summer. I was hired in the position of Senior Software Architect to develop middleware for integration of RPC based systems (DCE RPC), OLE and CORBA. Our system was used for integration of business applications, such as SAP, BAAN and PeopleSoft on the Internet. The product had GUI components (forms) with Basic scripts which could be downloaded from the Web server or sent around using a workflow engine (we integrated with the NEC workflow). Our components could be called "Transportable Agents", though Basic language is hardly popular in the agent community. The system was completely flexible and data-driven. As I was working on the integration of the object interfaces, it became clear that the answer to large-scale integration of disparate business systems & their data (i.e. electronic commerce or business to business transactions) should be data-driven also, i.e. based on declarative programming. The practical business problems of creation of data warehouse or configuration of EDI exchange are difficult to solve, and software agents might be an answer.