Agent fabrication and its implementation for agent-based electronic commerce

In the last decade, agent-based e-commerce has emerged as a potential role for the next generation of e-commerce. How to create agents for e-commerce applications has become a serious consideration in this field. This paper proposes a new scheme named agent fabrication and elaborates its implementation in multi-agent systems based on the SAFER (Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution & Roaming) architecture. First, a conceptual structure is proposed for software agents carrying out e-commerce activities. Furthermore, agent module suitcase is defined to facilitate agent fabrication. With these definitions and facilities in the SAFER architecture, the formalities of agent fabrication are elaborated. In order to enhance the security of agent-based e-commerce, an infrastructure of agent authorization and authentication is integrated in agent fabrication. Our implementation and prototype applications show that the proposed agent fabrication scheme brings forth a potential solution for creating agents in agent-based e-commerce applications

Q-contract net: A negotiation protocol to enable quality-based negotiation in Digital Business Ecosystems

The Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) is the result of the co-evolution of the Business Ecosystem and the DigitalEcosystem. There are numerous approaches and enabling technologies which are used in modeling open businessmarketplaces and, due to the similarities between the Digital Business environments, they can also help to enable the Digital Business Ecosystem but with some limitations. The complete lifecycle of the DBE can be decomposed into the following phases: formation, evolution and dissipation. In this work, our main focus is on the importance of negotiation in the DBE formation phase and especially on the structure of Contract Net Protocol. We will present an extension to the primitive Contract Net Protocol and name it Contract Net with Quality Protocol (CNQP or Q-Contract Net) to facilitate the negotiation process by adding the quality evaluation steps during the negotiation phase of the DBE formation

The Semantic Grid: A future e-Science infrastructure

e-Science offers a promising vision of how computer and communication technology can support and enhance the scientific process. It does this by enabling scientists to generate, analyse, share and discuss their insights, experiments and results in an effective manner. The underlying computer infrastructure that provides these facilities is commonly referred to as the Grid. At this time, there are a number of grid applications being developed and there is a whole raft of computer technologies that provide fragments of the necessary functionality. However there is currently a major gap between these endeavours and the vision of e-Science in which there is a high degree of easy-to-use and seamless automation and in which there are flexible collaborations and computations on a global scale. To bridge this practice–aspiration divide, this paper presents a research agenda whose aim is to move from the current state of the art in e-Science infrastructure, to the future infrastructure that is needed to support the full richness of the e-Science vision. Here the future e-Science research infrastructure is termed the Semantic Grid (Semantic Grid to Grid is meant to connote a similar relationship to the one that exists between the Semantic Web and the Web). In particular, we present a conceptual architecture for the Semantic Grid. This architecture adopts a service-oriented perspective in which distinct stakeholders in the scientific process, represented as software agents, provide services to one another, under various service level agreements, in various forms of marketplace. We then focus predominantly on the issues concerned with the way that knowledge is acquired and used in such environments since we believe this is the key differentiator between current grid endeavours and those envisioned for the Semantic Grid

Secure mobile multiagent systems in virtual marketplaces : a case study on comparison shopping

The growth of the Internet has deeply influenced our daily lives as well as our commercial structures. Agents and multiagent systems will play a major role in the further development of Internet-based applications like virtual marketplaces. However, there is an increasing awareness of the security problems involved. These systems will not be successful until their problems are solved. This report examines comparison shopping, a virtual marketplace scenario and an application domain for a mobile multiagent system, with respect to its security issues. The interests of the participants in the scenario, merchants and clients, are investigated. Potential security threats are identified and security objectives counteracting those threats are established. These objectives are refined into building blocks a secure multiagent system should provide. The building blocks are transformed into features of agents and executing platforms. Originating from this analysis, solutions for the actual implementation of these building blocks are suggested. It is pointed out under which assumptions it is possible to achieve the security goals, if at all

How Ontologies Can Help in an eMarketplace

Recently, ontologies have been developed in various business domains with the recent maturing of the Semantic Web technologies. However, ontology-related researches have largely focused on the facilitation of successful matchmaking but not much on traders’ requirement elicitation and potential negotiations in e-marketplaces. Because ontology provides the key knowledge about the inter-relationships among the issues and alternatives of the traders’ requirements, we show how to elicit trade requirements, alternatives, and tradeoff from an agreed ontology. This facilitates the whole business process of the e-marketplace, from matchmaking, recommendation, to negotiation. We further propose a novel methodology for the elicitation of dependencies among traders’ requirements for the formulation of an effective decision plan. As a result, traders can have a better cognition of their requirements and the overall operations of the e-marketplace can be streamlined

Software Agents for Electronic Marketplaces: Current and Future Research Directions

The premise of software agents to define the structural and operational models of the virtual marketplace of the future can account for the increased interest regarding their application in areas where they can add substantial value in terms of automation and functionality. At the heart of such a marketplace rests an ontology modeling the domain upon which a nucleus of agent-based services can be constructed. Negotiation services hold the dominant position in terms of the attention they have received in research. Complementary to them, but no less important, are the advising services representing support functionality that is required throughout the cycle of a deal; from the expressed intention of the two parties to eventual maturity and closure. In this paper we focus on research trends and on their possible future development for ontologies and the above service categories emphasizing on the role of software agents in this context. A review and analysis of past and present works helps to formulate sets of questions that future research will seek to address

Examining Consumer Pre-purchase Deliberation Process in an Online Marketplace

The research objective of this study was to examine the consumer pre-purchase deliberation process in an online marketplace. Especially, examining the role of extrinsic quality (website-related quality), intrinsic quality (business operation-related quality), reputation of the retailer (other consumers’ opinions), attitude toward the retailer, and intention to transact with the retailer in an online marketplace context was main purpose of this study. To collect the data, extensive online survey was performed. The data were analyzed through structural equation modeling test. Findings revealed that there are significant positive relationships among extrinsic quality, intrinsic quality, reputation of the retailer, attitude toward the retailer, and intention to transact with the retailer in an online marketplace. Especially, influence of extrinsic quality on intrinsic quality was considerably strong. However, influence of the reputation of the retailer showed weak influence on attitude toward the retailer unlike the suggestions of previous studies. In addition, the result of this study revealed that there is double-layered structure (extrinsic and intrinsic quality) in the quality of the retailer, which has not been conceptualized and empirically tested in the previous studies. Managerial and academic implications and future research directions based on the findings were offered

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Generic Business Model Types for Enterprise Mashup Intermediaries

The huge demand for situational and ad-hoc applications desired by the mass of business end users led to a new kind of Web applications, well-known as Enterprise Mashups. Users with no or limited programming skills are empowered to leverage in a collaborative manner existing Mashup components by combining and reusing company internal and external resources within minutes to new value added applications. Thereby, Enterprise Mashup environments interact as intermediaries to match the supply of providers and demand of consumers. By following the design science approach, we propose an interaction phase model artefact based on market transaction phases to structure required intermediary features. By means of five case studies, we demonstrate the application of the designed model and identify three generic business model types for Enterprise Mashups intermediaries (directory, broker, and marketplace). So far, intermediaries following a real marketplace business model don’t exist in context of Enterprise Mashups and require further research for this emerging paradigm