Characterisation of Status Quo

Work Unit 3 (WU3)

Objective

Evaluation and monitoring of the status quo on agent technologies for e-commerce applications.

Approach

In this work unit, the common basis of currently available agent architectures like IBM's aglets,
Concordia, JASMAS, etc. will be described in requirements for a conceptual framework. The following will be described: the properties of agent architectures, the environment assumptions that are required, the assumptions on available types of domain knowledge, and the implementation tools used to build these. Information will be gathered by exploiting already running projects at the various partners on application of agent technology; by studying literature on research projects abroad; and by visiting research centres, institutes, and industries in the world.

This work unit also covers an investigation of different problem fields for which agent technology serves as a solution. This is done by characterising problem types in terms of domain structure, domain constraints and assumptions, requirements on security, and requirements on functionality. A means to formalize this characterisation is to define one or more domain-specific ontologies.

The security requirements are incorporated both on a process level concerning content (i.e. preventing faults and mis-usage of transaction data) and on a transaction level concerning issues as data transmission and encryption (i.e. preventing illegal duplication or application of overheard data).

The results of this work unit will be used in work unit 5.

Currently available deliverables

[0D3.1] Status Quo on Agent Technology (restricted access only)
Technical report on literature study on standards and related work on agent technologies (including communication, architectures, ontologies, intelligence, negotiation, mobility, security), agent modeling (including utility, negotiation, strategy, agent communication and cooperation, modeling tools and frameworks), and security (in trading, communication and transactions). (2000 Q1)

[3D3.1] Status Quo on Agent Technology.