Table Of ContentInternational Handbooks on Information Systems
Series Editors
Peter Bernus · Jacek Błaz˙ewicz · Günter Schmidt · Michael Shaw
Titles in the Series
P.Bernus,K.Mertins and G.Schmidt (Eds.)
Handbook on Architectures ofInformation Systems
ISBN 3-540-64453-9
M.Shaw,R.Blanning,T.Strader and A.Whinston (Eds.)
Handbook on Electronic Commerce
ISBN 3-540-65822-X
J.Błaz˙ewicz,K.Ecker,B.Plateau and D.Trystram (Eds.)
Handbook on Parallel and Distributed Processing
ISBN 3-540-66441-6
H.H.Adelsberger,B.Collis and J.M.Pawlowski (Eds.)
Handbook on Information Technologies for Education and Training
ISBN 3-540-67803-4
C.W.Holsapple (Ed.)
Handbook on Knowledge Management 1
Knowledge Matters
ISBN 3-540-43527-1
Handbook on Knowledge Management 2
Knowledge Matters
ISBN 3-540-43527-1
J.Błaz˙ewicz,W.Kubiak,T.Morzy and M.Rusinkiewicz (Eds.)
Handbook on Data Management in Information Systems
ISBN 3-540-43893-9
S.Staab and R.Studer (Eds.)
Handbook on Ontologies
ISBN 3-540-40834-7
S.O.Kimbrough and D.J.Wu (Eds.)
Formal Modelling in Electronic Commerce
ISBN 3-540-21431-3
Steven O. Kimbrough
D.J.Wu
Editors
Formal Modelling
in Electronic Commerce
With 83 Figures
and 60 Tables
123
Professor Steven O.Kimbrough
University ofPennsylvania
Operations & Information Management
565 Jon M.Huntsman Hall
3730 Walnut Street
Philadelphia,PA 19104-6340,USA
E-mail:[email protected]
Professor D.J.Wu
800 West Peachtree Street,NW
College ofManagement
Georgia Institute ofTechnology
Atlanta,GA 30332-0520,USA
E-mail:[email protected]
Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
Library ofCongress Control Number:2004114081
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library ofCongress.
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Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data available in the internet at http://dnb.ddb.de
ISBN 3-540-21431-3 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York
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Preface
Questions abound.
• What is the deep structure of a purchase order, or for that matter any
other business document, such as an invoice, bill of lading, receiving re-
port, or contract? How can a purchase order (or other document) be
representedsothatorganizationsmay—automatically,withoutdirecthu-
maninvolvement—create,send,reasoncorrectlyabout,andactproperly
on the purchase order (or other document)?
• How may a purchase order (or other business document) be structured
without ad hoc-ness, so that it may be used by automated agents every-
where?
• Beyond sending simple messages, how can the need of organizations to
conduct extended conversations automatically be supported?
• Is it possible, and if so how, for artificial agents to negotiate contracts
and trade procedures? What are the possibilities? the limitations?
• What are the underlying principles of reasoning about such subtle con-
cepts as obligations, permissions, actions, and norms? How might these
principles be formalized and employed generally in electronic commerce
automation?
• Howcanartificialagentsdiscoverandlearnstrategiesthatareeffectivein
commercial—hence, game-theoretic—contexts? What are the candidate
learning regimes and what are their performance characteristics? Will
they be exploitable? Will they be exploiting?
• Whatarethebehavioralcharacteristicsofmarketsandothercommercial
transactionspaceswhenpopulatedbyartificialagentsthatareintelligent,
adaptive, and learning? Will they be stable? Will they be efficient?
Thesequestions,andmanyotherquestionslikethem,matterbecauseimpor-
tant prospective advances in electronic commerce—the progressive automa-
tion of the conduct of business—depend on answering them. The questions
are deep. They merit and will receive enduring attention. It is widely agreed
that the state-of-the-art on these questions calls for intensive and protracted
attention. Happily, the issues they raise admit of imperfect solutions, which
may profitably be translated into practice, then replaced as knowledge im-
proves. The scene is dynamic and filled with opportunities, both for funda-
mental contributions and for transfer of knowledge to practice.
TheFMEC(FormalModelingforElectronicCommerce)communityisan
informal,diverse,international,andveryopengroupofresearchers,whoshare
an interest in these questions. The community has been operating actively
since 1987, and has produced nearly a score of workshops (with attendant
papers), nine special issues of journals (totaling 59 papers), and at least 21
Ph.D. theses. In addition, several score papers have appeared in journals,
VI Preface
conferences,andworkshops.Thecommunityhasbeenfecundinitsideasand
prolific in its published output.
The purposes of this volume are several:
• To present the latest work from the FMEC community
The book contains 14 new papers, representing the best of the current
FMEC work.
• To present FMEC papers of historical and conceptual import, which are
not otherwise available in the open literature
The book contains 5 such papers.
• To provide an historical and, mainly, conceptual guide to the issues that
have been addressed by the FMEC community
Thebook’sfirstchapterprovidesanintegratingessayonFMECwork.It
willbeausefulguidetothereaderofthisbookandtotheresearcherwho
wishes to probe further. In addition, the book contains a unified master
bibliographyofseveralhundredentries,aswellasacomprehensiveindex.
Wehope,andbelieve,thisvolumewillbeusefulforresearchersandgrad-
uate students with interests in electronic commerce or in the fundamental
issues engaged by the questions listed above. Practitioners, especially those
involved in research or development of leading-edge systems, will also find
heremuchtoreckonwith.Most,ifnotall,oftheideasexploredhereareripe
for conversion to applications.
We end with a note of thanks. Since 1987, dozens of people have made
importantcontributionstothecreationandmaintenanceoftheFMECcom-
munity.Wethankthemall,evenifitisnotpossibletonamethemall.Special
thanks, however, go to four senior individuals who have been exemplary in
the support and encouragement they have given this community.
• Melvin F. Shakun, editor of Group Decision and Negotiation
• Ralph H. Spague, Jr., organizer of the Hawaii International Conference
on System Sciences
• Andrew Whinston, editor of Decision Support Systems
• Vladimir Zwass, editor of Journal of Management Information Systems
and International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Finally, thanks to Mike Shaw for suggesting this project and to the editors
at Springer for their patience.
Bala Cynwyd, PA and Atlanta, GA Steven O. Kimbrough
September 2004 D.J. Wu
Contents
Preface ....................................................... V
FMEC: Overview and Interpretation ......................... 1
Steven O. Kimbrough, D.J. Wu
1 Introduction................................................. 1
2 Formalisms.................................................. 2
3 Themes..................................................... 5
4 Topics...................................................... 6
5 A Brief Guide to the Volume .................................. 7
6 Upwards and Onwards........................................ 13
7 Acknowledgements ........................................... 18
A FMEC Bibliographic History .................................. 18
Part I. Representation: Objects, Processes & Policies
Practical Contract Storage, Checking, and Enforcement for
Business Process Automation................................. 33
Alan Abrahams, David Eyers, Jean Bacon
1 Introduction................................................. 33
2 Contributions ............................................... 35
3 Application Scenario ......................................... 36
4 Overview ................................................... 37
5 Occurrences ................................................. 40
6 Kimbrough’s Disquotation Theory ............................. 45
7 An Implementation of Kimbrough’s Disquotation Theory ......... 47
8 Contract Provision Monitoring................................. 59
9 Contract Performance and Enforcement......................... 61
10 Software Implementation...................................... 65
11 Related Work ............................................... 71
12 Conclusions ................................................. 72
13 Acknowledgements ........................................... 73
A Coverage Checking Rules ..................................... 74
Legitimacy Checking in Communicative Workflow Design..... 79
Aldo de Moor, Hans Weigand
1 Introduction................................................. 79
2 The Extended Workflow Loop ................................. 81
3 Extended Workflow Loop Norms .............................. 82
4 Workflow Loop Schemas ...................................... 86
5 A Method for Legitimacy Checking............................. 89
VIII Contents
6 Conclusions ................................................. 97
CANDIDSpecificationofCommercialandFinancialContracts,
Part I: Syntax & Formal Semantics of CANDID .............. 101
Ronald M. Lee
1 Introduction................................................. 101
2 The Language L ............................................ 103
1
3 Re-Interpretation of Predicates ................................ 106
4 Many-Sorted, Type-Theoretic Languages........................ 107
5 λ Abstraction............................................... 108
6 Operations, Definite Reference................................. 110
7 Summary of the Language L ................................. 111
v
8 Character Strings, Labels ..................................... 114
9 Numbers and Measurement ................................... 115
10 Time, Realization, Change .................................... 117
11 Possible Worlds, Intensions.................................... 122
12 Summary of the Language IL.................................. 125
13 Action...................................................... 130
14 Modals, Deontic Operators.................................... 131
15 Summary of the Language CANDID ........................... 136
CANDIDSpecificationofCommercialandFinancialContracts,
Part II: Formal Description of Economics Actors and Objects 145
Ronald M. Lee
1 Introduction................................................. 145
2 Economic Actors............................................. 150
3 Economic Objects............................................ 153
4 Summary ................................................... 157
CANDIDSpecificationofCommercialandFinancialContracts,
Part III: CANDID Specification of Financial Concepts ....... 159
Ronald M. Lee
1 Introduction................................................. 159
2 Additional Definitions, Notational Conventions .................. 160
3 Elementary Financial Concepts ................................ 161
4 Financial Instruments ........................................ 167
5 Concluding Remarks......................................... 176
Performatives, Performatives Everywhere but Not a Drop of
Ink ........................................................... 177
Ronald M. Lee
1 Performative Aspects of Commerce and Public Administration .... 177
2 Issues for Open Electronic Commerce........................... 186
3 From Ink to Bits: Original, Signed Writings ..................... 188
4 Computational Modeling of Documentary Procedures............. 192
5 Protocols for Procedure Adoption.............................. 194
Contents IX
6 Discussion and Further Research Directions ..................... 197
7 Acknowledgments............................................ 198
EDI, XML, and the Transparency Problem in Electronic
Commerce.................................................... 201
Steven O. Kimbrough
1 EDI and the Transparency Problem ............................ 202
2 XML’s Pertinent Virtues and Limitations ....................... 203
3 Communications Requisites ................................... 206
4 microFLBC and the Transparency Problem ..................... 211
5 Back to XML ............................................... 221
6 Conclusion .................................................. 224
Part II. Applications
Designing Control Mechanisms for Value Exchanges in
Network Organisations ....................................... 231
Vera Kartseva, Yao-Hua Tan
1 Introduction................................................. 231
2 A Methodology for Designing Control Mechanisms ............... 233
3 Modelling Business Value Models .............................. 234
4 Modelling Sub-Ideal Situations ................................ 236
5 Distinguishing Different Types of Control Mechanisms............ 243
6 Conclusions ................................................. 244
Sim-I-Space: An Agent-Based Modelling Approach to
Knowledge Management Processes ........................... 247
Max Boisot, Ian MacMillan, Kyeong Seok Han, Casey Tan, Si Hyung
Eun
1 Introduction................................................. 247
2 Model Architecture .......................................... 248
3 Model Components .......................................... 252
4 Acknowledgements ........................................... 263
A Description of Variables....................................... 263
B Detailed Model Specification with Example ..................... 278
Part III. Communication
On Representing Special Languages with FLBC:
Message Markers and Reference Fixing in SeaSpeak .......... 297
Steven O. Kimbrough, Yinghui (Catherine) Yang
1 Introduction................................................. 297
2 Special Languages............................................ 298
3 Two Problems............................................... 300
X Contents
4 Background on SeaSpeak ..................................... 302
5 Prototype Example: INFORMATION .......................... 304
6 Problems of Reference Fixing.................................. 307
7 Formalizing Distributed Descriptions into FLBC ................. 312
8 Analysis of the Remaining SeaSpeak Message Markers ............ 315
9 Discussion and Conclusion .................................... 320
A Note on Modelling Speech Acts as Signalling Conventions.. 325
Andrew J.I. Jones, Steven Orla Kimbrough
1 Introduction................................................. 325
2 Asserting: Two Prototypes .................................... 326
3 Other Speech Acts ........................................... 330
4 Discussion: Towards Deployment............................... 334
5 Summary and Conclusion ..................................... 339
Dynamic Conversation Structures: An Extended Example .... 343
Scott A. Moore
1 Introduction................................................. 343
2 Extended Example ........................................... 345
3 Conclusion .................................................. 359
Part IV. Agents and Strategic Interactions
Investigating the Value of Information and Computational
Capabilities by Applying Genetic Programming to Supply
Chain Management........................................... 363
Scott A. Moore, Kurt Demaagd
1 Introduction................................................. 363
2 The Evolutionary Process..................................... 366
3 Plan of Investigation ......................................... 380
4 Summary ................................................... 387
A Terminals and Functions...................................... 388
B Settings for a Scenario........................................ 389
C Computing-Related Information ............................... 390
Multi-Agent Simulation of Financial Markets ................. 393
Olga Streltchenko, Yelena Yesha, Timothy Finin
1 Introduction................................................. 393
2 Automation of Modern Financial Markets....................... 394
3 Simulation of Financial Markets ............................... 399
4 A Multi-Agent Environment for Financial Market Simulation...... 404
5 Conclusions ................................................. 416
