Objective
MAGICA is concerned with the production of multimedia electronic catalogues and their delivery through telematics services over the Internet and other networks. Focusing on commercial applications in international trade and tourism, the user-driven project builds on an earlier feasibility study to develop a generic solution for the publication of changing electronic multimedia catalogues. Advanced software agents are innovatively employed to achieve interoperability. Besides contributing to progress in electronic commerce, MAGICA heralds the development of advanced applications with a wide customer base.
APPROACH: The project integrates and builds upon the results of feasibility study IE 173, MAGICA. Within this study a thorough market understanding was developed by confronting end users with a basic demonstrator developed for this purpose. The project is driven by users of information technology and involves users heavily interested in and committed to the use of telematics technology to enhance their activities. The main innovative aspect of the project is the use of software agents as a way to integrate hardware and software services and to achieve interoperability.
RESULTS EXPECTED: The project acts as a testbed and guideline for future business practices with a main emphasis on validation through a series of applications. The strong user involvement will enable the applications to be commercially exploited on completion of the work.. The project develops a generic solution for publishing dynamically changing electronic multimedia catalogues. This generic solution is then instantiated in related applications in the specified sectors of international trade and tourism. For enhancing the usability of information, an active support service based on software agent technology is conceptualised, and a prototype of this service is validated.
IMPACT: The project will enhance the competitiveness of the European telematics industry, primarily by enabling advanced applications with a potentially wide customer base to be developed, and secondarily by providing new methodological and technological advancements towards the concept of electronic commerce.
STATISTICS: From a total project effort, 70% goes into the development and validation of demonstrators, the remaining 30% to shared supportive activities. 35% is devoted to validation. The consortium is composed of 12 partners and 1 sponsoring partners, based in 4 European countries.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
00142 Roma
Italy