A system generating CV through intelligent agents and Apache Cocoon

Informatica, Dec, 2006 by Evelio J. Gonzalez, Alberto Hamilton, Lorenzo Moreno, Juan A. Mendez, Jose Sigut, Marta Sigut

The aim of this paper is to present a dynamic system for the automatic and dynamic generation of CV documents in an academic and research environment. In particular, this system has been developed in the FES Department of the University of La Laguna, Spain. For that purpose, the authors have integrated Multiagent Systems (MAS) with XML and Apache Cocoon, designing a web portal where the users--in this case, professors and research students- can manage their CV data. Regarding to the use of Apache Cocoon and apart from showing its great potential one of the main contributions of the work presented in this paper consists of the dynamic generation of the web environment, since the forms presented to the user change as soon as the structure of the XML files is modified. In other aspect, the agents will ensure the privacy and safety of the data.

Povzetek: Predstavljenje sistem za a vtomatsko generiranje CV.

Keywords: MAS, Apache Cocoon, Development

1 Introduction

The Spanish Universitary model requires its members to manage a big amount of personal data, such as publications in journals and conferences attended. Different official institutions--Ministry of Education and Science, regional governments, universities--often require researchers and students for these data in order to different purposes such as awarding a contract or research fellowship, annual reports, etc. Unfortunately, it is usual that each institution has its own template to fill, so researchers are often condemned to waste their time typing the same data in different documents. It has been calculated that the generation of a CV takes an average 3-hour period and that an automated system could save at least $25,000 per 100 generated CV's.

This scenario immediately brings XML back. This standard language provides a well-supported and powerful technology for the described scenario. Users would only need to type their data once in a XML file and apply a different XSL transformation in order to generate each type of document. Unfortunately, there are a good number of users in this scenario that find XML extremely difficult. For example, it is hard to imagine a standard Philosophy Ph.D. student typing a XML file and applying a XSL transformation to it. Thus, it would be desirable a user-friendly web environment in which researchers and students could manage their personal data--enter/delete/look for/update a publication, course, etc.--and generate their updated CV with only a click. For that purpose, the authors have decided to use Apache Cocoon as base of the designed web environment. An interesting tool provided by Apache Cocoon is its forms (Cocoon forms or CForms), a XML way to build forms that can be filled by the users. In this sense, and this is one of the main contributions of this paper, it would be desirable that the forms were generated in a dynamic way. In other words, that the structure of the form should change as soon as the data architecture is modified, as several fields can be added in the CV data request by the official institutions. In addition to this, the data introduced through these forms should be validated against the restrictions codified in XML, e.g., maxInclusive in numeric data.

This system for the dynamic generation of CV documents has been integrated in a Multiagent System, originally developed for the automatic management of agendas in a Universitary Scenario [1][2][3]. This system, called MASplan, has been designed using FIPA specifications [4] and its aim is to help the members of the Universitary Scenario to organize internal meetings and to get resources such as portable computers and projectors. For the integration of the web environment into that system, the authors have implemented several agents whose behaviour can be studied in an independent way. In addition to this, the agents in MASplan, and therefore the new agents, take the advantage of the use of ontologies, expressed in a highly expressive language, OWL.

Why do the authors use agents in the generation of CV documents when it seems that a simple database for each user could be sufficient? Some researchers may think that the decision of developing a MAS in this case is questionable. They could think that employing MAS is a bit like using a sledge-hammer on a thumb-tack. The answer lies in the human behaviour. Firstly, it has been observed that sometimes the corresponding author of an article forgets to communicate the acceptance of that paper to the rest of the authors. Even if the corresponding author sends, e.g., an e-mail to a co-author communicating the good news, this co-author is usually so busy that he/she prefers to update his/her CV database later, taking the risk of 'losing' the paper in his/her CV. This behaviour implies that each user sends an e-mail to every related colleague, looking for that 'lost' publications, whenever he/she needs to present a CV document, wasting a lot of time in this way. Thus, a general database--an initial attempt was initially implemented in Apache Cocoon-, covering all the users' merits, could be a good solution. However, once more the authors have bumped into the human behaviour. In spite of the security offered by the database manager, a significant number of members of the Universitary Scenario were reluctant to insert their data, claiming that they did not want leave their data in a centralized system where they could be accessed by malicious people. In this context, the features provided by the multiagent systems--distribution, reliability, proactivity, autonomous and reactive behaviour, etc.--seem to be especially useful.