Artificial intelligence has moved beyond simply answering questions and generating text. A new generation of AI systems—known as AI agents—is emerging with the ability to plan tasks, use tools, make decisions, and complete multi-step workflows with less human intervention. From managing emails and analyzing data to writing software and assisting customers, AI agents could significantly change how people work. What Are AI Agents? An AI agent is a software system that can perceive information, reason about a goal, take actions, and adapt based on the results. Traditional AI tools usually respond to a specific instruction. For example, you might ask an AI chatbot to summarize a document, and it provides a summary. An AI agent can go further. You could give an agent a goal such as: "Research three competitors, compare their pricing, summarize their main features, and prepare a report." The agent may then: 1) Understand the objective. 2) Break the task into smaller steps. 3) Searc...
Access Methods
Sequential Access
* A sequential access file copys magnetic tape operation, and generally supports a few operations:
• read next - read a record and advance the tape to the next place.
• write next - write a record and advance the tape to the next place.
• rewind
• skip n records - Might or might not be supported. N may be limited to positive
numbers, or may be limited to +/- 1.
Direct Access
* Jump to any record and read that record. Operations supported include:
• read n - read record number n. ( Note an argument is now needed. )
• write n - write record number n. ( Note an argument is now needed. )
• jump to record n - could be 0 or the endof file.
• Query current record - used to turn back to this record later.
• Sequential access can be easily copied using direct access. The inverse is complicated and inefficient.
Other Access Methods
An indexed access scheme can be easily construct on top of a direct access system. Very large files may need a multi-tiered indexing scheme, i.e. indexes of indexes.
