Dynamic agent architecture for Dynamic agent architecture for open - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Dynamic agent architecture for Dynamic agent architecture for open - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Dynamic agent architecture for Dynamic agent architecture for open e- -commerce commerce open e Universit de Montral Nader Troudi ntroudi@newtrade.com & Peter Kropf kropf@IRO.UMontreal.ca 05/02/2003 AgentCities ID3 Plan


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05/02/2003 AgentCities ID3

Université de Montréal

Dynamic agent architecture for Dynamic agent architecture for

  • pen e
  • pen e-
  • commerce

commerce

Nader Troudi ntroudi@newtrade.com & Peter Kropf kropf@IRO.UMontreal.ca

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05/02/2003 Université de Montréal 2

Plan

  • Agents and multi-agent systems
  • Agents and e-commerce
  • Existents solutions : constraints and complexities
  • The P2P model
  • Agents and P2P
  • The proposed architecture
  • Conclusion
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05/02/2003 Université de Montréal 3

Motivation : the hotel domain Motivation : the hotel domain

  • Actors : clients, providers and intermediaries.
  • Case : the client wants to book 25 rooms in a

specific city.

  • No provider has 25 rooms available.
  • Client has to split his request over many hotels.
  • Many independent requests : prices will vary.
  • Client wants to deal with one hotel only.
  • The hotel needs to contact other hotels (better

deal).

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05/02/2003 Université de Montréal 4

Our view of agent and multi-agent systems

  • Agent :

« Agents are persistent computations that can perceive, reason, act and communicate. » [Jennings2001]

  • Multi-agent systems (MAS):

« consists of a group of agents that combine their specific competencies and cooperate in order to achieve a common goal. Efficient cooperation as well as coordination procedures between agents endow a MAS with a capability higher than the sum of the individual agent’s capabilities. » [O’Hare96]

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What are our Agent characteristics ?

  • The agent needs to be :

– Personalized – Proactive – Reactive – Autonomous – Interactive with other agents

  • An agent may be :

– Intelligent – Able to learn – Mobile

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Why agent oriented methodology in E Why agent oriented methodology in E-

  • commerce problem solving ?

commerce problem solving ?

  • We need to decompose the problem in multiple,

interacting, flexible, autonomous components that have goals to achieve (buyer, seller, service provider, etc).

  • Agent decomposition.
  • We need a model or an analysis tool to represent

these subsystems and their relationship :

  • Agent paradigm is the most suitable.
  • Agent interaction : can be viewed in terms of

high-level social interactions.

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When you need the agent ?

  • The environment is highly dynamic, uncertain or

complex (e-commerce)

  • Agents are a natural metaphor (seller, buyer)
  • Distribution

– data – control – expertise

  • Integration with legacy systems (Hotel industry :

PMS, CRS)

We need agency in E-commerce.

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Agent and MAS applications

  • Personal Assistant Agents (Internet agents, Mail agents

Scheduling/ secretary). BotBox.com

  • Interface agents, (MIT projects :Letizia )
  • Manufacturing and resource allocation.
  • Traffic Management.
  • Entertainment (games and movies).
  • Network Management, (Telcordia products).
  • Virtual organizations and e-commerce.
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E-commerce ?

  • Definition : « A commerce where market and participants are virtual. »

[Oliveira2001].

– capabilities of making available and/or searching for product information in electronic format. – Electronic negotiation has been added recently.

  • Specificities :

– Virtuality: participant, place, product, money, etc. – Availability: 7 days a week, 24 h per day. – Transparency : more information is now available. – Size : huge number of user and transactions ( 7000 M $). – Diversity : region, culture, language, etc. – Competitiveness : a solid competition (40 000 properties). – Cost reduction : marketing, transport.

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Examples : the Hotel case.

  • Commercial
  • Hotels.com
  • Price line
  • ebay
  • Expedia
  • etc
  • Academic
  • Kasbah
  • Magma
  • etc
  • most of the currently available systems are inflexible.
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Constrains and limitations

  • Too much control

– Enforces conventions that create a stable, predictable environment for trading. – Set rules of interaction ( how, when, where, policies, price increment).

  • Segregation

– Traders in a particular electronic market cannot see trading partners in other similar markets without first joining those markets. – The travel domain : hotels need to register at expedia, hotels.com, travelocity, etc.

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Constrains and limitations

  • Inflexibility:
  • Different proprietary trading environments available and no way to

profit form all of them.

  • Priceline : « Name your own price »
  • Mercata.com et Mobshop.com : aggregated demands to reduce

price.

  • many type of request are impossible today
  • « I want to buy a golf package if the chance of rain is less than

30% »

  • Weak automation
  • Decisions in many systems are still made by people, not by software

agents.

  • the online travel agencies are not able to compare their price to the
  • ne provided in GDS for example.
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Constrains and limitations

  • Emphasis on price: we should include
  • Participant awareness
  • Branding
  • Trust
  • Context
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What we need ?

  • E-commerce applications have to be seen as enabling

technologies for more advanced inter-agent relationships leading to the effective creation of open virtual environments

  • Open environments are characterized by having

components that are autonomous (acting independently), heterogeneous (designed independently), of dynamic membership (joining, changing, and leaving arbitrarily) and of large scale (numerous).

  • These properties are compatible with both the agent and

the peer-to-peer paradigm

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P2P

  • P2P networks, consisting of nodes that are peers of each
  • ther provide a suitable paradigm for implementing dynamic

trading.

  • Replace the traditional centralized structure of client-server

interactions.

  • Applications
  • Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella and Freenet.
  • Pastry and Chord.
  • P2P tools are not able to exchange complex data and to deal

with heterogeneity, coordination and data management problems.

  • Agent technology is of interest here because it adds more

intelligence over the P2P technological layer.

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P2P agent system architecture P2P agent system architecture

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Advantages

  • Flexibility :
  • Decentralized and open market.
  • Participants are autonomous and have the control.
  • New network and relationship.
  • Customization
  • Agents are personalized and context aware.
  • They can involve other criteria than price when

trading.

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Advantages

  • Collaboration
  • Agents can rely on each other to execute complex

tasks.

  • Agents will need to cooperate and exchange

information for protection purpose.

  • Integration
  • Agent will not replace available solutions, they can

wrap them or use them (integration of existing standards).

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Agent internal architecture

Coordination layer

Communication layer Business processing layer

Collaboration layer

Presentation Management and monitoring

EbXML/OTA JMX HTML WML http/https JXTA FIPA

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Advantages

  • Modularity.
  • Reusability.
  • Flexibility.
  • Easy of use.
  • Personalization.
  • Standardisation.
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Conclusion

  • Software agents can help in E-commerce.
  • E-commerce marketplace are not necessarily centralized.
  • We presented a distributed marketplace architecture
  • P2P network
  • Agent technology
  • futures work
  • Dynamic group creation and self-organization.
  • Security in open environments.