AGENT BASED E-COMMERCE SYTEM WITH

FEATURES OF DISTRIBUTED DECISION

SUPPORT SYSTEM
Sivaprasad.G Chandra Mouliswaran.S

M.tech-Research Scholar Assistant Professor Senior

School Of Computer Science and Engineering School Of Information Technology and Engineering

Vit University Vit University

Vellore Vellore

Mail:cvaprasadg@gmail.com Mail:chandramouliswaran@vit.ac.in

Abstract: Agents are processes which work as
autonomous entities or with other agents. To execute
some processes at different location, a distributed
application has to be executed at those places. In this
paper we discuss about agents in e-commerce and their
role in automated negotiation. We also discuss about
how the agents will help in decision making process.
Introduction:
A distributed decision support system (DDSS) is
defined as a decision support system which supports
distributed organizational decision making. The
domain for distributed decision support involves
situations in which decision models are semi-
structured and decision criteria are semi-determined
among decision makers. In this we discuss about
agents in e-commerce where we use DDSS. The
potential of e-commerce lies in the fact that it is a
technology that does not improve old processes, but
instead allow one to break old rules and create a new
paradigm in which business is conducted. However,
much of the technology and potential of e-commerce
is built on the foundation of the Internet, which is
highly unstructured and heterogeneous and dynamic.
This creates the problem of information over loading.
In the e-commerce context, this makes searching and
information comparison about a particular product or
category difficult [2].
The solution to above problem is engaging software
agents in filtering entities. In recent years,
autonomous software agents, which can be viewed as
delegates of human being in the cyber space, have
drawn much attention because of their potential
capacity to radically change traditional e-commerce
technologies. But several challenges, including both
technical and social aspects, must be addressed
before the wide application of multi-agent systems in
real-world ecommerce. One of these challenges is to
determine how these heterogeneous, self-interested
agents should interact and negotiate with each other,
given that there is no global control on the Internet
[3].
Agents and Their Roles:
The agent moves through the network,
communicating with all the required websites,
databases, and the user, providing a single state point
to remember and execute the transaction while being
independent of the infrastructure supporting.
Agents can be geographically distributed allowing
the interaction with users of different levels of
responsibility and involvement in the main problem
solving. Agents (elementary and/or complex) interact
with each other by means of passing messages. A
message is structured in such way that allows the
transfer of the necessary information and semantics
between agents for cooperative work
accomplishment.
1. An agent will be informed when a new member
enters his community or when another leaves.
2. During the problem solving process, appropriate
agents activation dynamically forms an
organizational structure that fits with the current goal.
In our approach, interface agents activate task agents.
3. Activities of agents are initiated either top down by
a user or a task agent through queries, or bottom up
through monitoring information sources for particular
information the interface agents can receive messages
or queries from users.
In this we discussed about the different type of agents
present in e-commerce
Buyer Agent:
In, e-commerce a possible transaction is initiated by a
buyer agent that gathers requirements from an
individual and conducts purchase on his/her behalf. A
user starts by specifying a product category (ex:
cars). With this information, the buyer agent
negotiates with the provider through intermediatory
agent.
Seller Agents:
In e-commerce these agents work on behalf of
providers. These agents contains information about
products, their prices.They participate in negotiation
with customer on behalf of provider through
intermediatory agent.
Intermediatory Agent:
It contains the type of information that helps the
buyer agent as well as list of seller agents that can
satisfy both the buyer and provider requirements.
In e-commerce there is also another type of agents
called as Mediated Agents.
There are four different mediated agents.
Adapter Agent:
It helps buyers/seller to identify and exchange their
information.
Coordinator Agent:
It plays the role of system coordinator it supervises
the entire process and makes the agents to collaborate
more easily.
Facilitator Agent:
It helps buyers/sellers to establish an alliance.
Broker Agent:
It can publish or search goods/services.
Negotiator Agent:
It will find the best rewards for both sides. It will
handle the process of bargain. If bargain is not
unsuccessful it will make the adjustments in prices
and try to make it successful automatically [5].
As we had discussed about different types of agents
in e-commerce. Main advantage of all these agents is
they help in the process of automated mechanism for
negotiation. In the coming section we discussed
about how agents will help in automated mechanism
process.
There is another type of agents called as mobile
agent. Mobile agents roam the net on users behalf,
identify the providers that interest users and possibly
exchange messages with providers about different
issues. Mobile agents have the ability to address
efficiently some of the problems:
1. Numerous relevant web sites with product and
service catalogues have to be searched,
2. The operation of these sites needs to be
understood, and the needs of users have to be
specified according to the characteristics of these
sites,
3. Users have to retain information, such as
prices, warranties, and returning policies,
while switching from one site to another
4. Security problems may take place when
submitting sensitive information [6].
Autonomous Negotiation Process:
Negotiation is the process by which group of agents
communicate with one another to try and come to a
mutually acceptable agreement on some matter.
Agents will negotiate in the form of messages with
other agents. In e-commerce, as it is distributed
through worldwide, as it contains more than one
agent, agents will use xml language for message
exchange.
The agents involved in autonomous negotiation
Process can be characterized to be buyers, sellers and
intermediaries. A process definition typically also
includes an electronic negotiation scenario, which
specifies the set of rules, and the object of the
negotiation. For the intention phase the following
tasks related to the offer exchange in electronic
negotiations can be identified:
Offer specification:
The agents have to specify offers indicating their
constraints towards the transaction object. This
specification may also include the provision of
signatures or the definition of timestamps.
Offer submission:
Submitting an offer can range from the active task of
sending an offer to a specific agent or group of agents
to the notification of completion of the offer
specification and its provision in an accessible
manner.
Offer analysis:
Upon reception, offers are usually not only stored and
processed but also checked for compliance with
certain conditions or rules.
For the agreement phase the execution of additional
tasks may be necessary
Offer matching:
The goal for this task is to find pairs of offers that
firstly classify as potential candidates for a
transaction execution.
Offer allocation:
Using the results of the offer matching and scoring,
this task has to determine the result of the process
execution and thereby defines the duties of the agents
involved in the manifested deal. If the selected offer
still features value ranges or options, a final
configuration is also part of the offer allocation task.
Offer acceptance:
In this final task, buyers or sellers have the chance to
accept or sign one or more offers in order to execute
the trans-action within the agreed-upon deal.
In order to make negotiation more effective,
negotiation strategies [4] have been described:
1. Cooperative Negotiation:
For cooperative negotiation, the participants have
their own preferences on different trading attributes.
Therefore, it is possible for the two parties to obtain
satisfactory results after the effective bargain.
2. Competitive Negotiation:
For competitive negotiation, the objectives of both
sides are conflicting. Both sides have the same
preferences on the same attributes. Hence, one side
losses some benefits when another side gets some.
Agent Based Distributed Decision Support Sytem:
With the prevalence of the Web, most decision-
makers are likely to use the Web to support their
decision-making. Web-based technologies are
leading a major stream of researching decision
support systems (DSS).Distributed Decision Support
System (DDSS) is defined as a decision support
system which supports distributed organizational
decision making. Another definition of DDSS is
decision support system services on the web.
In this we discuss about e-commerce where we use
DDSS to help the decision makers to make
satisfactory decisions by using some of the agents
which we have discussed in previous sections.
Some important terms in DDSS [7] are:
Decision resources:
Decision resources are all information resources that
can support decision-making. They help users to
solve some problems or make decision.For simplicity
we identify four types of decision resources in this
paper: database, models, knowledge and documents.
Consumer or decision-maker: A consumer or
Decision-maker is a user who needs and wants to use
certain decision resources to help him to solve
problems or make decision. Decision-maker can
benefit from applying decision resources to support
decision-making.
Provider:
A provider is a user who offers decision resources
and publishes them to attract decision makers for
using the decision resources. Provider can benefit
from offering decision resources to decision-makers.
Electronic Market:
An electronic market is a market infrastructure on the
Internet where providers register and publish their
decision resources and decision makers search and
acquire decision resources supporting decision-
making. Electronic market acts as the intermediary to
match decision-makers and providers and offers a
good platform for them to share and transact decision
resources.
Transaction process in DDSS:
1. Providers create or update decision resources.
2. Decision resources are registered in electronic
markets after standardization.
3. Decision-makers search their favorite decision
resources from electronic markets.
4. Electronic markets return searching results to
decision-makers.
5. Decision-makers access the appropriate decision
resources according to the returned results in step
4.Electronic markets will then make a problem-
solving plan. It can be executed remotely and the
results are returned to decision-makers. Alternatively,
decision makers may also download decision
resources and execute the plan on their local
machines.
6. Decision-makers feed back their suggestions to
providers by e-mail or message board after they
employ the decision resources so that providers
improve their decision resources according to
decision-makers needs.
Some of the agents which we have discussed in
previous section will be useful in e-commerce with
DDSS features, for ex: buyer agent, seller agent,
intermediatory agent etc.
In DDSS, there are mainly three modules 1.provider,
2.customer, 3.DDSS Manager.
The DistDSS Manager is developed as a Web
service-enabled application. It is developed with the
intent of having minimal human-interaction.DistDSS
Manager (Intermediatory Agent) provides
coordination and notification tasks, it requires three
main Web services. The provider Web service can be
accessed by the providers and must be developed so
that providers and the DistDSS Manager can pass
each other requests, data, and solutions. The
customer Web service must be developed to interact
with customers in order to build agents that will
represent them in the system as well as provide
notification to them.
Web services play a critical role in the development
of agents for the system. In particular, the customer
Web service acts as an agent shell, developing the
customer agents (Buyer Agent). A customer begins
the process of using the DistDSS by accessing a
prescribed Web service that creates an agent. The
Web service interacts with the customer in order to
decipher his/her personal preferences. In the same
way provider web service is used to develop a
provider agent, which acts on behalf of provider.
Both provider and customer agent send their
preferences to intermediated agent. Intermediate
agent will respond with a suitable model which
satisfies both customer and provider with the help of
Decision Resource.
CONCLUSION:
In this paper we had discussed about the different
types of agents and their roles. We also discussed
about how agents will automatic negotiation process.
In this we also discussed about how these agents will
help in e-commerce in which we use Distributed
Decision Support System Features.
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