Negotiation services for e-marketplaces

随着电子商务和谈判对市场交易的重要性日益受到重视，目前越来越需要有效的系统来实现在线交易的谈判。如果设计得当，电子谈判系统应该降低与电子市场谈判相关的成本，减少市场参与者对计算机中介谈判的抵制，并促进更好协议的出现。然而，尽管电子谈判大有希望，但这些系统的设计始终缺乏系统的、可追溯的和可复制的方法。因此，今天的大多数电子协商系统实现单一的协商协议，该协议通常硬编码到系统中。为了使电子协商系统实现其承诺，需要将结构化方法与用于其设计、开发和部署的可配置框架结合起来。这种方法和框架的核心需求必须是将协商协议与实现它的系统分离，因此需要通过共享语言正式指定协议。该方法和框架的其他关键需求包括：可配置性、标准化工具、支持定制和重用的通用组件、成本和流程效率，以及快速和容易的部署和测试。由此产生的系统应该是基于web的、易于使用和个性化的、负担得起的、可跟踪的、可靠的、安全的、可扩展的、高效的，并且可以与其他信息系统集成。该研究项目试图使用模型驱动的面向服务的方法开发这样的方法和框架，并利用web服务编排技术和语言对协商过程进行建模。

With an ever-increasing emphasis on e-commerce and the importance of negotiation to market transactions, there is a present and growing need for effective systems to enable negotiation in online transactions. When properly designed, e-negotiation systems should lower the costs associated with negotiation in the e-marketplace, reduce resistance by market participants to computer-mediated negotiation, and foster the emergence of better agreements. Yet, despite the great promise of e-negotiation, the design of these systems has always lacked a systematic, traceable and reproducible approach. Consequently, most e-negotiation systems today implement a single negotiation protocol, which is usually hard-coded into the system. In order for e-negotiation systems to fulfill their promise, a structured approach is needed in conjunction with a configurable framework for their design, development, and deployment. A core requirement for this approach and framework must be a separation of the negotiation protocol from the system that implements it, thus requiring protocols to be formally specified via shared languages. Other critical requirements for the approach and framework include: configurability, standardized tools, generic components to enable customization and reuse, cost and process efficiency, and rapid and easy deployment and testing. The resulting systems should be web-based, easy to use and personalize, affordable, traceable, reliable, secure, scalable, efficient, and open to integration with other information systems. This research project seeks to develop such an approach and framework using a model-driven service oriented methodology, and to leverage web service orchestration techniques and languages for modeling negotiation processes.