Matchmaking in Electronic Markets: An Agent-Based Approach towards Matchmaking in Electronic Negotiations

181 Pages·2003·1.14 MB·English

by  Daniel J. Veit (auth.)

Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2882
EditedbyJ.G.CarbonellandJ.Siekmann
Subseries of Lecture Notes in Computer Science
3
Berlin
Heidelberg
NewYork
HongKong
London
Milan
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Daniel Veit
Matchmaking
in Electronic Markets
An Agent-Based Approach
towardsMatchmakinginElectronicNegotiations
1 3
SeriesEditors
JaimeG.Carbonell,CarnegieMellonUniversity,Pittsburgh,PA,USA
Jo¨rgSiekmann,UniversityofSaarland,Saarbru¨cken,Germany
Author
DanielVeit
UniversityofKarlsruhe(TH)
InformationManagementandSystems
Englerstrasse14
76131Karlsruhe
Germany
E-mail:[email protected]
BasedonDissertation2003DA27,UniversityLibraryatUniversityofKarlsruhe
Titlefigurebasedon:
D.J.Veit,J.P.Müller,Ch.Weinhardt(2002)
MultidimensionalMatchmakingforElectronicMarkets
JournalofAppliedArtificialIntelligence,16(9-10),2002,p.858,Figure1.
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CRSubjectClassification(1998):I.2.11,I.2,K.4.4,J.1,H.3,H.4,C.2.4
ISSN0302-9743
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Foreword
Electronicnegotiationsconcernthe transactionofagreementsonthebasisof
electronic media, usually the Internet. They play an essential role within a
growing number of domains in the modern economy. Within recent years
in consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer as well as in business-to-
business scenarios electronic platforms for all these fields have been estab-
lished, and these support the participants in the information, the agreement
or in the settlement phase of their transactions.
The degree to which the user is supported varies from platform to platform.
At the low end, lists of hyperlinks at a Website provide support to the user.
Therefore, many authors define such platforms as electronic markets. How-
ever, this definition does not seem to be very reasonable,because under this
definition all online catalogue systems form electronic markets. Since a mar-
ket defines a location– evena virtual location– in which offers and requests
meetandperform,severalauthorsdefine anelectronicmarketasa platform,
in which at least all core phases – information, agreement and settlement –
are electronically assisted.
Acentralcomponentofelectronictransactionsisthematchingofofferingand
requesting parties within a market – the key issue in the above-mentioned
agreementphase.Therefore,initially,knowledgehastobegeneratedonwhich
participants are potential transaction partners. There can be several candi-
dates. For the final decision on which transaction partner to choose, it is
essential to evaluate the alternatives. A so-called ranking of the alternatives
along with the preference of the participants is desirable.
Withinhiswork,Mr.Veitisfocusingexactlyonthisproblem:Howcanincom-
ing offers be matched regarding a specific request. He defines a framework
in which a ranking can be generated in order to acquire an optimal deci-
sion for a desired transaction. This ranking procedure within the framework
is called matchmaking. Hereby, the matchmaking procedure gets more and
more complex, particularly when not only flat structures are compared but
multidimensional or multiattribute offers and requests meet, i.e., the trans-
action decision depends on severaldecision criteria.
In this book Mr. Veit introduces a generic framework for multidimensional
matchmaking, its implementation, and an analysis of it. The use cases de-
VI Foreword
scribedinthebookstemfromthehumanresourcesdomain.Inthisparticular
application, ideally suited persons are matched against vacant positions. It
is obvious that such a decision should not be made by just comparing one
attribute. Therefore,like in many analogous domains, severalattributes and
dimensions are matched.
One of the highlights in this book is the genericity of Mr. Veit’s approach,
based on which matchmaking can be performed over arbitrary types and
offer-request structures. The implementation – which has been realized as a
multi-agentsystem–canrepresentbothofferingandrequestingagents.This
framework can be applied within a huge variety of application domains of
electronic negotiations within electronic markets.
Therefore,thisbookisanessentialcontributiontothee-market/e-negotiation
literature and I wish the best success for its publication, for its author, and
most of all for its readers.
September 2003 Christof Weinhardt
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Universita¨t Karlsruhe, Germany
Preface
In the first place I would like to thank Prof. Christof Weinhardt from the
University of Karlsruhe who significantly contributed with his ideas to the
quality of this book. Also I would like to thank Prof. Rudi Studer, Prof.
WernerRothengatterandProf.AndreasGeyer-SchulzfromtheUniversityof
Karlsruhe for supporting my work.
I would like to especially say “thank you” to my wife Gudrun and my two
littlechildrenJonathanandHelenafortheeveningswhichtheyspentwithout
me and thereby enabled me to finish this book.
Rudi Kober, Dr. Jo¨rg P. Mu¨ller and Martin Schneider from Siemens AG in
Munich also deserve special thanks for their support of my work.
For their inspirations, I would also like to thank Prof. Thomas Eiter from
the University of Technology, Vienna, Prof. V.S. Subrahmanian from the
UniversityofMaryland,CollegePark,USA,andProf.BernhardSeegerfrom
the University of Marburg.
I would like to thank the human resources departments of Lufthansa AG in
Frankfurt, the University Hospital in Giessen, and Siemens AG in Munich
for their contribution to the use cases in this book.
LastbutnotleastIwouldliketothankallmycolleaguesinKarlsruhefortheir
continuous support during the writing of this book. I would especially like
to thank Dr. Miroslav Budimir, Clemens Czernohous, Michael Grunenberg,
Jo¨rg Sandrock and Ilka Weber for proofreading the manuscript.
August 2003 Daniel J. Veit
Universita¨t Karlsruhe, Germany
Contents
Part I Fundamentals & Related Work
1 Introduction.............................................. 3
1.1 Motivation ............................................ 4
1.2 Reader’s Guide......................................... 5
1.2.1 Structure of This Work ........................... 5
1.2.2 Historical Perspective............................. 6
2 Terminology and Overview ............................... 9
2.1 Terminology ........................................... 9
2.1.1 Economic Concepts Used in This Work ............. 10
2.1.2 Concepts from Computer Science................... 12
2.2 General Field .......................................... 22
2.2.1 Electronic Markets ............................... 23
2.2.2 Electronic Negotiations and Electronic Auctions...... 24
2.2.3 Multi-Agent Systems ............................. 25
2.3 Matchmaking in Electronic Negotiations................... 26
2.4 Phases of Matchmaking ................................. 28
2.5 Application Domains for eNegotiations .................... 30
2.5.1 Matchmaking in Multi-attribute Auctions ........... 30
2.5.2 Multidimensional Matchmaking in Human Resources
Negotiation...................................... 33
2.6 Summary.............................................. 34
3 Related Work ............................................ 37
3.1 Matchmaking Approaches ............................... 38
3.1.1 Application Oriented Matchmaking Mechanisms...... 38
3.1.2 Matchmaking in the SHADE and COINS Approach... 39
3.1.3 Service Classification in Agents’ Societies............ 41
3.1.4 Matchmaking versus Brokering..................... 42
3.1.5 Middle Agents – Role Definitions for Mediating Agents 45
3.1.6 LARKS: Interoperability among Heterogeneous
Software Agents.................................. 46
3.1.7 Matchmaking Approaches for Heterogeneous Active
Agents .......................................... 51
X Contents
3.1.8 The InfoSleuth Approach.......................... 55
3.2 Electronic Negotiation Approaches........................ 56
3.2.1 Electronic Negotiation – The Montreal Taxonomy .... 57
3.2.2 Electronic Negotiation Approaches with Information
Systems Focus ................................... 60
3.2.3 Electronic Negotiation Approaches with Multi-Agent
Systems Focus ................................... 68
3.2.4 Electronic Auctions............................... 71
3.3 Discussion............................................. 72
3.4 Summary.............................................. 75
Part II The Multidimensional Matchmaking Approach
4 Matchmaking Architecture ............................... 79
4.1 Concepts .............................................. 79
4.2 Generic Matchmaking Framework – Overview.............. 80
4.2.1 Grappa Matchmaking Engine ..................... 81
4.2.2 Grappa Matchmaking Library..................... 82
4.2.3 Grappa Toolkit ................................. 83
4.3 Modelling Multidimensionality ........................... 83
4.4 The Grappa Framework ................................ 84
4.4.1 The Offer and Request Description Language
(ORDL) of Grappa .............................. 85
4.4.2 Basic Types in Grappa........................... 89
4.4.3 Heterogeneous Offer and Request Profiles............ 95
4.5 Distance Functions and Metrics .......................... 97
4.5.1 Metric Definition and Properties ................... 98
4.5.2 Distance Functions for the Basic Type FreeText...... 100
4.5.3 Distance Computations for Numbers, Intervals,
Dates, and Times ................................ 108
4.5.4 Aggregate Functions for Complex Types............. 111
4.5.5 Weighting Paradigms for Complex Matchmaking ..... 114
4.6 Summary.............................................. 117
5 Matchmaking Implementation ............................ 119
5.1 Scope ................................................. 119
5.2 Applied Technology..................................... 120
5.2.1 JAVA........................................... 121
5.2.2 RMI Server – Remote Method Invocation ........... 122
5.2.3 EJB – Enterprise Java Beans ...................... 122
5.3 Implementation of GRAPPA............................. 123
5.3.1 Basic Entities and Processes ....................... 123
5.3.2 Configuration.................................... 124
Contents XI
5.3.3 Matchmaking JAVA-library
de.siemens.zt.ik6matching...................... 127
5.3.4 Deployment as Enterprise Java Beans Component .... 130
5.4 Summary.............................................. 131
Part III Application, Evaluation & Outlook
6 Application in a Real-World Market ...................... 135
6.1 Scope ................................................. 135
6.1.1 Human Resource Information Systems .............. 135
6.1.2 Job Exchanges and Corporate Networks............. 136
6.2 Project Background .................................... 137
6.3 HrNetAgent......................................... 138
6.3.1 Adaption of Grappa for HrNetAgent ............ 139
6.3.2 Results.......................................... 140
6.4 Summary.............................................. 140
7 Empirical Evaluation ..................................... 143
7.1 Domain Independent Experiments with Grappa: Performance143
7.2 Domain Specific Experiments ............................ 145
7.2.1 Method for Case Studies .......................... 145
7.2.2 Settings ......................................... 145
7.2.3 Measures........................................ 147
7.2.4 Results.......................................... 148
7.2.5 Discussion....................................... 151
7.3 Summary.............................................. 160
8 Conclusions and Outlook ................................. 161
8.1 Review of This Work ................................... 162
8.2 Future Work........................................... 164
8.2.1 Limitations of This Approach...................... 164
8.2.2 Extension of Multidimensional Matchmaking Using
Ontologies and Learning .......................... 165
8.2.3 Further Application of Multidimensional
Matchmaking in the Finance Domain ............... 165
8.2.4 Multidimensional Matchmaking, Web Services, and
the Grid ........................................ 166
References.................................................... 169
Index......................................................... 177