A software agent based virtual enterprise for electronic commerce
OMER F. RANA, Mario Kupries · International Journal of Services Technology and Management · 2002
A virtual enterprise is described where specialised functions are allocated to collaborating software components. The behaviour of each component is specified by a collection of rules, and the state of each component is not made directly available to others except through a specialised communication language. The execution of each component is dependent on the contents of the received message and its current state. The granularity of a component can vary, hence each component can wrap existing applications within an enterprise, such as a database management system or a trends analysis system, or may be required to provide a visual result to a user. The definition of a virtual enterprise for managing and sharing business processes is first provided, followed by an architecture template for building applications in electronic commerce, and influenced by the "Electronic Market Place" (EMP) paradigm. Specialised components which perform the task of buyers, sellers, intermediate brokers and facilitators within the EMP are described, and the concepts are demonstrated with an implementation in Java for a travel agent application.