Dear GRAAP Working Group,
my name is Sebastian Hudert and I am affiliated with the Department of
Information Systems Management at the University of Bayreuth. I have
been working on a negotiation framework for WS-Agreement together with
Dr. Heiko Ludwig (IBM Research) and Prof. Guido Wirtz (University of
Bamberg). After meeting Wolfgang Ziegler at the CoreGRID Integration
Workshop he suggested to introduce our ideas to the GRAAP WG in order
to contribute to the WSAgreementNegotiation standard.
Our main idea was to create a framework with which not only one
particular negotiation protocol (e. g. an English Auction) can be
executed, but one that allows for a variety of different negotiation
protocols to be used according to the particular situation the system is
in. We proposed an XML-based language that can be used to define a
negotiation protocol in a machine-processable manner. A protocol
description, coded as an XML document, therefore represents all the
input needed by a service requestor or provider in order to take part in
the particular negotiation process.
Using the derived data structure we propose a two-staged negotiation
process:
1. Exchange process: During this phase a negotiation protocol
description document is created (possibly based on pre-defined protocol
types and referring to a given WS-Agreement Template) and distributed to
the future negotiators within the system. This process is implemented as
a set of simple interfaces and valid method invocation sequences in
analogy to the WS-Agreement standard itself.
2. Negotiation process: After supplying all negotiators with the
protocol description these nodes engage in the actual negotiation
process. We propose a set of generic interfaces able to cope with all
negotiation protocols that can be described with the description
language we defined.
This way the logical steps from an initial need for a resource or the
will to sell one to reaching a valid WS-Agreement are:
Protocol Definition (XML-based Documents) à Exchange of protocol
description to future negotiators (Exchange process) à Negotiation
(Negotiation process) à Agreement formation
I included a Paper presented at KIVS 07 on this topic. We hope that you
find our ideas an
interesting input for the ongoing standardization effort. I will attend
the OGF 23 in Barcelona which would also be a possibility for me to
present our work in the working group session, if there is interest among
the WG.
Best Regards,
Sebastian Hudert
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Sebastian Hudert
Dipl. Wirtsch.Inf.
Department of Information Systems Management
University of Bayreuth
Universitaetsstr. 30
95447 Bayreuth
Building Applied Informatics
Tel: +49 921 557665
Fax: +49 921 557662
