Agent system supporting building of electronic mail service system

An agent system for assisting in construction of an e-mail service system, the e-mail service system comprising a database management system for managing a database and a mail server provided on the Internet, the agent system comprising:

• a conversion rule dictionary storing information for translating a request of a process to be performed on the database described in e-mail into a language for accessing the database, and information for editing a result of the process obtained from the database management system into e-mail;
• a process request extraction means activated when e-mail is received at a predetermined mailbox provided on the mail server, the extraction means fetching the e-mail from the mailbox to extract a process request described in the e-mail;
• a process request translation means for translating the extracted process request to the language for accessing the database referring to the conversion rule dictionary, the translation means passing the translated process request to the database management system;
• a process result editing means for receiving from the database management system a process result obtained by performing the process on the database in accordance with the process request translated into the language for accessing the database, the editing means editing the received process result into an e-mail format referring to the conversion rule dictionary;
• a sending means for sending the process result edited into the e-mail format to a desired user as e-mail.