Abstract: There is provided a facilitator having a flexible distributed configuration using cells with enhanced security.

Abstract: An information mediating apparatus has: a mediating condition file in which mediating condition list data describing specific mediating conditions has been stored; and a personal information file in which personal information peculiar to a person, a group, or the like has been stored. A mediation service processing unit reads out the mediating condition list data designated in response to a mediating request from the user from the mediating condition file, notifies a backend server in a service providing server group, collects and selects service information matched with the mediating condition list data, and displays it to the user. The mediating service processing unit is constructed by: a user interface processing unit having an HTML forming function; and a logic processing unit described as an information mediating program.

Abstract: There is disclosed an information providing system having a mediator adapted for receiving renewal information for an index from information servers or information sources to select the received renewal information in accordance with index selection condition. The mediator sends the selected renewal information to a retrieval engine.

Abstract: A facilitation mechanism between users and databases is composed of a user agent for interfacing between users and the entire facilitation mechanism, a DB agent for interfacing between each database and the facilitation mechanism, and a facilitation agent for mediating between each of the agents, which are distributed. By adopting this system in the present invention, a facilitation mechanism in which scalability can be secured for an increase in the number of users, the addition of databases, etc., operation load and operation managing cost can be distributed, and security of information can be protected, can be realized.