2010 International Conference of Information Science and Management Engineering

Design of the Low-cost Business Intelligence System Based on Multi-agent

Yong Feng

Yang Liu

College of Information
Liaoning University
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
fengyong@lnu.edu.cn

College of Information
Liaoning University
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
feelofdream@163.com

Xue-xin Li

Chuang Gao

Hong-yan Xu

College of Business Administration

Liaoning University
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
lixx_1229@sina.com

College of Business Administration

Capital University of Economics and
Business
Beijing, China
gch60@vip.163.com

College of Information
Liaoning University
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
xuhy@lnu.edu.cn

effectively reduce the construction cost of BI system and

extent applied scope of BI system.
The paper is organized as follows: Section briefly
introduces the current applied status of BI. Then the
problems in construction of BI system are pointed out and
multi-agent technology is explained. Section presents a
design of the low-cost business intelligence system based on
multi-agent which includes the framework of the system, the
analysis of the core components function and the operation
mechanism of the system. Finally, conclusions close the
paper and the future work is introduced.

AbstractBusiness intelligence is a key means to promote core

competence of enterprise. However, the enormous construction
cost of business intelligence severely limits the popularization
and development of business intelligence. The multi-agent
technology provides a feasible solution for construction of lowcost business intelligence system. Firstly, this paper introduces
the current applied status of business intelligence and multiagent technology. Secondly, a design of the low-cost business
intelligence system based on multi-agent is put forward, which
is composed of the low-cost business intelligence system
framework, the analysis of the core components function and
the operation mechanism of the system. According to the given
design, the construction cost of business intelligence system can
be effectively reduced and the applied scope of business
intelligence can be extended.
Keywords-business
design

I.

intelligence;

multi-agent;

II.

A. Applied status of BI
BI is composed of three core components, namely data
warehouse(DW), online analytical processing(OLAP) and
data miming(DM), where DW is the basis of BI which
provides comprehensible and accurate data support for the
other two components [3]. With the development of global
economic integration process, enterprises in the world have
broken through the national border to carry out the
manufacture, operation, vendition and service. Therefore, in
construction of BI systems enterprises need to consider the
following applied status: (1) Distributed user circumstance.
Global economic integration makes various types of users in
enterprise distribute in different area of the world. It needs
BI system to adapt to a distributed user circumstance. (2)
Distributed data circumstance. Enterprises carry out
activities on a global scope which result in the global
distribution of business data. These data is the basis of the
formation of BI. Therefore it needs BI system to adapt to a
distributed data circumstance. (3) Heterogeneous data
resources. The various business processing systems of
enterprise, such as ERP, CRM, and SCM and so on, produce
large amounts of business data every day. These data is
heterogeneous, redundant and isolated each other. It needs BI
system to integrate heterogeneous data resources.

low-cost;

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays knowledge has become a key economic

resource [1] and been an important means to form the core
competence and obtain competitive advantage for all kinds
of enterprises. Knowledge is embedded in the routine
business data, such as consumption records of customers,
sales orders for dealers and supply voucher of provider. To
discovery the knowledge from those data could effectively
aid enterprises in scientific decision-making and analysis.
Via transforming the customer and operational information
into knowledge, Business Intelligence (BI) provides the
consolidation and analysis of raw data, and the capacity of
processing raw data into the executable decision-making
information. It could enhance the competitiveness of
enterprises by using different sources from customers,
operations and market information [2]. However, the existing
approaches about construction of business intelligence
system seriously hampered the popularization and
development of business intelligence because of the high
construction cost. This work introduces multi-agent
technology into the design of business intelligence system to
978-0-7695-4132-7/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ISME.2010.161

RELEVANT CONCEPTS VIEW

291

The traditional implementation of BI is to extract data

from various business processing systems or local data
sources, transform and load data to DW at central site via
computer network. Then DW-oriented analysis and mining
are carried out. It benefits scientific and effective decisionmaking of enterprise [3]. Oriented to the current applied
status, the traditional implementation method requires
enterprises to provide high-speed data transmission networks,
high-capacity data storage at central site. It brings a heavy
financial burden to enterprises, especially to small and
medium enterprises which possess poor resource. To
enhance scientific decision-making and analytical capacity of
the vast number of domestic traditional enterprises and small
and medium enterprises in international competitiveness, this
paper takes the advantages of multi-agent technology to give
a low-cost BI systems design which can reduce the
construction cost of BI system and extend the applied scope
of BI by minimizing the amount of data transfer and data
storage.

Asynchronism. According to the difference of time and

space, mobile agent adopts interoperability mechanism to
construct asynchronous computing environment.
Capability of optimizing resource. Mobile agent can
optimize network communication and computing resources,
and achieve load balance. Mobile agent effectively reduces
the bandwidth of network connections, optimizes route,
debases the network latency and avoids the blindness of
accessing resource.
BI system adopts the architecture of multi-agent system.
Through the collaboration between agents, main tasks could
be completed on the local at all stages of BI, such as data
integration, online analytical processing and data mining etc.
So it avoids a lot of data movement and storage and reduces
the construction cost of BI system.
III.

DESIGN OF THE LOW-COST BI SYSTEM

Based on the above analysis, this paper takes advantage

of multi-agent technology to present a design of the low-cost
BI system. Many tasks, for example metadata extraction,
data query, analysis and mining etc., could be completed by
agents as to reduce the cost of data movement and storage.
The design includes the following three aspects, namely
framework, function analysis of core components and
operation mechanism of the system.

B. Multi-agent technology
Agent (also known as the software agent, intelligent
agent) is a program that can simulate human behavior and
relationship, possess certain intelligence, run independently
and provide relevant services. It can collaborate with other
agents to complete the assigned task [4]. Multi-agent system
is composed of a number of agents and completes the task
through the communication between agents and the
coordination with each other [5]. Each agent in multi-agent
system is an autonomous entity which can sense the
environment and make certain judgments and reasoning by
outside information. So it can make decision and control its
own behavior to complete a certain task. In multi-agent
system agent can be divided into static agent and mobile
agent according to its mobility.
Static agent is one type of agent. It always resides in the
originating position, exchange information with outside
world through communication mechanisms and collaborate
with other agent. Static agent has the common characteristics
of agent, such as autonomy, interaction, reaction and
initiative. It can independently carry out the task without the
control of people or other subjects. And it can determine own
behavior according to its own internal state and perceived
external environment without the interference of outside
world. It can also interact with other agent in order to
effectively carry out its work.
Mobile agent is another type of agent. It is defined as a
program which can automatically complete users tasks not
at the originating position, even moving from one node to
another node. When necessary, mobile agent can selfreplicate and generate sub-mobile agent. Mobile agent can
directly interact with the resources of each node and return
the result set to the originating node after the task is
completed. Mobile agent has the following characteristics [6]:
Mobility. In order to accomplish specific tasks, mobile
agent can move from the network node to another.
Parallelism. In support of the mobile agent system, a large
task can be broken down into several sub-tasks, and then a
mobile agent is assigned to complete each sub-task.

A. Framework of low-cost BI system

This paper divides BI system into three levels, namely
user interface layer, core function layer and data resource
layer, referring to literature [7] (see figure 1). User interface
layer mainly achieves the standardization of user requests,
the visualization of service results and the intellectualization
of service. Core function layer meets service demands from
user interface layer. The service demands can be put into
three categories, namely query, analysis, and mining. The
operation mechanism of this level complies with web
services [8]. The main tasks of data resource layer are to
provide basic data services to core function layer and
establish and maintain local metadata.
B. Analysis of core components function
In the given design, there are seven core components,
namely user agent, user management agent, task assignment
agent, OLAP agent, DM agent, data source management
agent and data source agent.
a) User agent. This component is located in the user
interface layer, created by user management agent when
user logs on and destroyed when user exits. The main
function of user agent is to aid users to acquire BI services
better including: clarifying service request by interaction
with user, sending request to the request list, receiving the
results from the corresponding agents and displaying the
results in the form of users preference.
b) User management agent. This component is located
in the core function layer and mainly achieves the following
function: managing user agent, managing user profile base
and sharing knowledge base, offering the query of sharing

292

algorithms in its inside, such as association rule discovery

algorithm, clustering and classification algorithms and so on.
It executes the data mining tasks in accordance with
different strategies. Its workflow is as follows: Firstly, DM
agent reads metadata from metadata base to clarify the
distribution of data resources. Then, it decomposes the
mining request based on metadata until each decomposed
sub-task can be completed at local data sources. Finally,
data mining algorithms which could finish the
corresponding sub-tasks are executed and the results are
returned to DM agent. There are two assignment ways of
data mining algorithms: One is that the DM agent directly
sends the code of algorithm to data source agent and then
data source agent receives and executes the mining
operation. The other one is that only ID of data mining
algorithm is sent to data source agent and then data source
agent calls corresponding native code to complete the
mining operations. The second one can reduce data
movement on network.

results, finishing certain tasks instead of user according to

analyzing users historical behavior record and carrying out
some intelligent services, for example collaborative
recommendation.
c) Task assignment agent. The main function of this
component is to assign the tasks based on the matchmaking
between requests and services including: managing request
list and service list, assigning request to the corresponding
service unit based on the matchmaking between users
requests and service items, achieving the service binding
between request agent and service agent according to web
services mechanism.
d) OLAP agent. The main functions of this component
include that, aggregating the relevant data in the form of
super-cube according to users request, providing multidimensional data analysis function, such as slice, dice, drilldown, drill-up and rotation etc.
e) DM agent. The component mainly achieves the
function of data mining. There are kinds of data mining

Figure 1. Framework of the low-cost BI system.

maintaining and updating metadata base; Implementation

of task mainly receives assigned task about data query,
sends the task to the corresponding data source agent and
integrates the results that are returned by data source agent.

f) Data source management agent. The main functions

of this component include routine maintenance and
implementation of task. Routine maintenance mainly
achieves the monitoring of various data sources,
summarizing the local metadata of various data sources,
integrating metadata through the ontology mapping [9],
establishing the global metadata stored in metadata base
which provides the call for other service units and

g) Data source agent. This component manages the

various types of data resources including structured data,
semi-structured data and unstructured data, provides basic
data services to the upper service units. Its main functions

293

e) Data source agent receives other services units calls,

provides basic data services, completes assigned tasks and
returns the result. At the same time, it maintains local
metadata and timely report the change of metadata to data
source management agent in order to update metadata base.

include two aspects: Firstly, it receives the calls of data

query, extraction and mining to complete the corresponding
task and provide data sets for query and analysis. Secondly,
it establishes and maintains local metadata, then sends the
local metadata to data source management agent for aiding
the establishment and maintenance of global metadata.

IV.

C. Operation mechanism of the BI system

The low-cost BI system based on multi-agent runs
according to the following mechanism.
a) After users log on the BI system and the system
verify users identity, user management agent automatically
creates a user agent for every user. Further, the
standardization of service requests and the visualization of
results are completed by user agent. Until the user exits the
system, the life cycle of user agent is the end.

CONCLUSIONS

In order to reduce the construction cost of BI system, this

paper presents a design of the low-cost BI system based on
multi-agent on the premise of the analysis of the applied
status of BI and multi-agent technology. Further, the
framework, the functions of core components and the
operation mechanism of the system in this design are
described in detail. The application of the given design can
effectively reduce the construction cost of BI system, extend
the applied field of BI and improve the scientific decisionmaking and the international competitiveness of Chinese
enterprises. There are some disadvantages in the current
study, thus our future work will focus on the systematic
implementation of the given design.

b) When a user requests a service, user management

agent receives the request message from user agent and tries
to retrieve the similar sharing knowledge which has ever
been a service result and stored in sharing knowledge base.
If exist, user management agent returns the service result to
the user. This avoids the impact on system performance that
user repeatedly requests the similar services. Otherwise, the
request is sent to task assignment agent for farther
processing. At the same time, user management agent can
predict service request of user according to users history
behavior records that are stored in the user profile base. For
example, when the fact that storekeeper monthly makes
statistic of inventory level is acquired by analyzing
storekeepers history behavior records, user management
agent can timely generate the monthly table on stock
automatically instead of storekeeper. So as the real-time
capability and intellectualization of service are guaranteed,
the performance of system could be enhanced by peakalternation operation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by 211 project of Liaoning
University.
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