Infrastructure components

  Infrastructure components simplify, augment, and automate the use of the underlying goods and services description languages. They do this by encapsulating reusable services common to different steps in the commerce process. We describe our commerce infrastructure components below, as they would be invoked in a typical scenario, diagrammed in Figure 2.

  

Figure 2: Infrastructure components

Initially, every agent or auction registers with the Registrar (not pictured) and receives an agent-id or auction-id, which uniquely identifies it and is used for communication within the system.

Step one in the information exchange process is for a buyer or seller agent to describe what good it wishes to exchange. For example, agents might describe the particular kind of query planning service they are providing or seeking in terms defined in some standard vocabulary. An agent sends this service description to the Service Classifier [22]. The Service Classifier classifies the service within a comprehensive taxonomy of information services and responds with a service label. The service label acts as a tag identifying a classified service within the system.

In step two, agents want to locate auctions where they can buy or sell the service. An agent sends the service label to the Auction Manager, adding information about particular auction attributes if they wish. The Auction Manager informs an agent of existing auctions for that service or, if necessary, creates a new auction.

In step three, each agent chooses one or more auctions to participate in. Buyer and seller agents are matched and a transaction price is set according to the rules of the auction. In the last step, the two agents transact and exchange the service.