Service-oriented e-Marketplace: an agent-based model

This paper develops a cooperative distributed systems framework for e-Marketplaces. We propose a business-centric knowledge-oriented architecture (BCKOA) framework. In this framework, we envision the e-Marketplace as a collection of economically motivated software agents that support the trading processes of several e-Business models. It enables and supports common integration and economic services between market participants, such as brokering, pricing and negotiation. The proposed architecture accommodates mechanisms of various market structures. This paper, however, will focus on commodity and Vickrey auction markets. It will briefly discuss the implementation of a prototype for BCKOA-based e-Marketplace using a coordinated, intelligent rational agent model and the Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agent specifications.