A REVIEW ON THE INTERACTION ISSUES IN AGENT-BASED MARKETPLACES

Abstract

While there are already literature surveys upon agent-mediated electronic commerce applications, none have specifically tackled the issue from an interaction perspective or looked at how the control is distributed among the agents. This state-of-the-art survey focuses on how agent interactions are handled. First, it deeply looks at how methods for enforcing the actions taken by agents have been dealt with, namely protocols, negotiation and auction. Second, it defines the various types of communication languages used in multi-agent market architectures. The three main alternatives are KQML, ACL and FLBC. A comparison is then made between them and shows how much they suite their purpose. Third, this paper highlights how the current electronic commerce applications provide explicit and integrated support for complex agent interactions and present several virtual institutions where agents are engaged in multiple bilateral negotiations. Finally, it discusses some related research perspectives and identify some limitations.