在电子商务中介平台中的无缝团代理【外文翻译】

外文翻译Seamless Incorporation of Agents in an E-CommerceIntermediation PlatforMaterialMaterial Source：Fourth International Workshop on Mobile Agents forTelecommunication ApplicationsAuthor:Irene Sygkouna , Maria Strimpakou , Francisco Valera , Anastasia Kaltabani , Luis Bellido , Enrique Vazquez , Miltiades AnagnostouAbstract. This paper describes the realization of a business-to-business intermediation e-commerce platform. The main concern derives from the combined usage of two emerging technologies, namely the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and the Mobile Agent Technology (MAT). The key issues that are addressed in this paper are the following. First, the scenario of the proposed system. Second, the definition of the required functionality and its design by means of appropriate service components based on J2EE principles. Third, the exploitation of agents in terms of their detailed design and implementation activities.Finally, the evaluation of the two interoperable technologies.1 IntroductionOver the past few years, electronic commerce has become an increasingly central part of the economy. In e-commerce literature, the overall electronic intermediation theme, as well as its relevance and relationship with particular business to business issues, have attracted considerable attention and generated quite comprehensive analyses[1,2]. Equally important experimentation and commercial exploitation of respective software systems [3] have been, in parallel, achieved.One of the most important things in actual electronic commerce is to achieve an accurate information interchange between participating entities (typically customer and provider), using any available communication infrastructure. The current networking environments with all the Internet and intranets communication services make possible the access to a great amount of information. Nowadays, it is essential to find a mechanism that allows customers and providers to find each others and perform e-commerce transactions in a fluent and precise manner, minimizing the time normally spent in finding useful information, which tends to be quite high. Thiskind of mechanism is provided by the so called mediation platform [3] that typically includes the set of duties which are supposed to rule every transaction associated withe-commerce and are oriented to decrease the distance between customers and providers, from a commercial point of view.In this paper, we present a particular brokerage platform, compliant to business to business models and respective systems implementation requirements, that is considered to be applicable across a number of diverse business domains. It introduces some experiences from the architecture, that are mostly related to the J2EE and MAT. The whole procedure has been performed in the context of the IST Smart-EC project.The J2EE TM[4], is a middleware platform that appeared at the same time as the beginning of Smart-EC project and so it has been possible to follow its evolution very closely. It facilitates the development, deployment and execution of distributed multitier Internet applications, like the brokerage one we are presenting. On the other hand, MAT is an advanced software technology, well suited for e-commerce since it supports the possibility of the direct and efficient interaction with procurement software through the agents’ability to move among network nodes. Both technologies have been successfully integrated and tested, as it is described in the article.This article is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the scenario of the proposed platform as well as its architecture in terms of the J2EE terminology. Section 3 focuses on the usage of the agent technology according to a detailed design and implementation issues, and the incorporation of the two technologies. Finally, Section 4 introduces some comparisons and remarkable conclusions in terms of the two afore-mentioned software technologies evaluation.2 Modeling an Intermediation E-Commerce Platform2.1 Smart-EC ScenarioIn the proposed complex services transactions model we consider three basic domains that are the User Domain, the Service Provider Domain and the Broker Domain, which actually represents the specific brokerage platform domain. The main phases of the complex e-commerce service transactions lifecycle of the proposed system are the following: first, the request formulation and solutions pre-processing, second, the solutions identification and bilateral negotiation, third, the solutions evaluation and finally, the transaction execution. The proposed system [5] is able to handle complex services composed by a set of simple services. Asimple service is defined to be provided as a whole by a provider. In the sequel, the functionality of the complex services transaction e-commerce system is described.After a customer has successfully accessed the system, he may construct requests by browsing a hierarchical menu of provided services. The knowledge required by the user to dynamically formulate a complex service request is provided by means of the Ontology technology [6] capabilities supported by the platform. Upon the user request validation and confirmation, the system invokes its internal brokering functionality in order to find an acceptable solution. A solution is defined as a set of offers (made by service providers) that is able to satisfy the user request. Specifically, for each simple service composing the request, the system identifies corresponding offers (i.e., zero, one, or more) meeting the requirements that account to the attribute values selected in the request form.When the solution identification phase is completed, the system presents a solution to the customer. The solution may be presented in several ways depending on the customer preferences. The platform is designed so as to support the co-operation with and servicing to a class of providers by allowing an extensive and online access to the brokered resources (affiliate service providers). The customer of the described brokerage platform, hereafter denoted as user, may redefine the attribute values of simple services for which no satisfactory offers have been found. In this case, the system will validate the updated request and perform a new solution identification process, until a satisfactory solution is found. Once the proposed solution has been accepted the system proceeds with the subsequent phase that is the transaction execution phase. In this last phase, the platform performs the corresponding service reservation and the necessary interactions with the service provider domains in order to actually proceed with e-commerce services provision and delivery.2.2 Smart-EC Architecture Based on J2EE PrinciplesIn the middle of the J2EE architecture are Enterprise JavaBeans TM(EJB TM) [4], which are responsible for solving the business logic and data access of the enterprise application. They are reusable components where developers can code almost any necessary object functionality (through session or entity beans) and that can be accessed by client programs and run on a J2EE server.Following this movement, in Smart-EC a three-level-tier architecture (client, server and information services) based on J2EE is used (see Fig.1). In this way, clients just have to handle the user interface and they do not have to query databases,execute complex business rules, or connect to legacy applications, because the middle-tier server is transparently doing these jobs for them.Smart-EC supports a diversity of heterogeneous clients, such as Web browsers and hand held devices. These clients are built with plain HTML and WML pages (no Java applets or scripting languages are used) and server access is done through HTML and WML forms that are processed by a servlet in the middle tier.This servlet acts as an information entry point to the middle tier from the client and several EJBs [5] are responsible for providing the business logic of the project . One of them, the System Controller Bean, is responsible for analysing the XML stream received from the servlet and dispatching the corresponding action to other related beans (UserHandler, ProviderHandler, LoginBean). These XML information exchanges, together with XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) documents make the system independent from the accessing device.Whenever it is necessary to retrieve external data, two special beans are used to contact the third tier of the architecture: the Ontology Handler is able to interact with the stored ontological knowledge and the Data Controller is centralising specific database accesses (user and provider profiles and catalogue queries or updates), so that the rest of the modules do not have to cope with database issues. Finally, there are three more beans that complete the system: the Complex Service Handler that is able to build atomic requests breaking the global request from the user into simpler requests so that they can be solved by different providers although they are finally offered as a whole to the user, the Solution Builder (SB) bean classifies the retrieved catalogue so as to select the offers that best fit with the user requests and the Transaction Handler (TH) bean in order to complete the trading cycle.The remaining bean, the Remote Provider Handler (RPH), is responsible for the connection of the system with the external affiliate provider system. In specific, RPH is commissioned with the responsibility to create and delegate the Mobile Provider Agent (MPA) in order to carry out the interaction between the Smart-EC side and each affiliate provider. In each Affiliate Provider Domain, the two agents that are identified are respectively called Static Affiliate Provider Agent (SAPA) and Mobile Affiliate Provider Agent (MAPA).译文在电子商务中介平台中的无缝团代理资料来源: Fourth International Workshop on Mobile Agents forTelecommunication Applications作者：Irene Sygkouna , Maria Strimpakou , Francisco Valera , Anastasia Kaltabani , Luis Bellido , Enrique Vazquez , Miltiades Anagnostou摘要：本文描述了B2B电子商务平台的实现。