B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

402 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
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Information j Matchmaking Matchmaking!, 1. _ . Information
|"" Agent P ^
r ""'"""""* Agent f*** Agent f * Agent |^'»= J =»" r |
,, ,, I Negotiating I Auctioning I Negotiating I „,,„_„
seller j»—» Agent p—» Agent f^ Agent I*** y
Collaborative | Collaborative
"* Agent ' Agent •*
Figure 13.7. — Agent communication
13.10. Need for a Universal Language
In a multi-agent environment, interacting agents need to have the same
understanding of a particular vocabulary and need to be able to present
the data in a single consistent language. Agents within a system have to
converse with agents external to the system, which are within another
agent framework (see Figure 13.7). Dynamic communication, cooperation
and collaboration among agents is possible only through a universal
language like XML. In a previous chapter, we have already discussed
the merits of using XML as a common syntactic representation of
knowledge.
Here are a few more merits of XML in the context of inter-agent
communication:
• XML has a way of defining the 'meaning' of new tags using XML
itself. With XML, virtually any data anywhere can be adapted to the
Web and used by agents.
• XML enables communication, cooperation and collaboration among
agents in a diverse, multi-agent environment (see Figure 13.8).
• Cataloging and information gathering agents can monitor and retrieve
online information from distributed and heterogeneous sources. This
information represented in XML format can be analyzed on the fly
and product catalogs and search results can be built dynamically.
• Using XML, agents can be built on open standards. Assembling the
various pieces of a complex multi-agent environment requires broad
accessibility and interoperability, which is possible only if agents are
developed using open standards.