Houssein Ben-Ameur

With the Internet as a growing channel for travel services distribution, sophisticated travel services aggregators are increasingly in demand. A travel services aggregation platform should be able to manage the heterogeneous characteristics of the many existing travel services. It should also be as scalable, robust, and flexible as possible. Using multiagent technology, we designed and implemented a multiagent platform for travel services aggregation called NADIM-Travel. In this platform, a… Show more

With the Internet as a growing channel for travel services distribution, sophisticated travel services aggregators are increasingly in demand. A travel services aggregation platform should be able to manage the heterogeneous characteristics of the many existing travel services. It should also be as scalable, robust, and flexible as possible. Using multiagent technology, we designed and implemented a multiagent platform for travel services aggregation called NADIM-Travel. In this platform, a planner-coordinator agent manages users’ requests as well as the response aggregation process. Service agents, on their part, act as gateways to external service providers, and are utilized to retrieve the responses. Show less

Available resources can often be limited with regard to the number of demands. In this paper we propose an approach for solving this problem, which consists of using the mechanisms of multi-item auctions for allocating the resources to a set of software agents. We consider the resource problem as a market in which there are vendor agents and buyer agents trading on items representing the resources. These agents use multi-item auctions, which are viewed here as a process of automatic… Show more

Available resources can often be limited with regard to the number of demands. In this paper we propose an approach for solving this problem, which consists of using the mechanisms of multi-item auctions for allocating the resources to a set of software agents. We consider the resource problem as a market in which there are vendor agents and buyer agents trading on items representing the resources. These agents use multi-item auctions, which are viewed here as a process of automatic negotiation, and implemented as a network of intelligent software agents. In this negotiation, agents exhibit different acquisition capabilities that let them act differently depending on the current context or situation of the market. For example, the ‘richer’ an agent is, the more items it can buy, i.e. the more resources it can acquire. We present a model for this approach based on the English auction, then we discuss experimental evidence of such a model. Show less

While most e-commerce research focuses on one market based problems, less work has been done on mul-timarket aggregation. Nowadays it is important to address the multimarket package e-procurement problem if we want to acquire a combination of goods and services from different suppliers and service providers. To achieve this, one should address the issues pertaining to identifying of a company's needs, discovering poten-tial partners and suppliers, gathering distributed information and… Show more

While most e-commerce research focuses on one market based problems, less work has been done on mul-timarket aggregation. Nowadays it is important to address the multimarket package e-procurement problem if we want to acquire a combination of goods and services from different suppliers and service providers. To achieve this, one should address the issues pertaining to identifying of a company's needs, discovering poten-tial partners and suppliers, gathering distributed information and conducting combined negotiations, creating a seamless of information flow with different heterogeneous markets, suppliers, and partners, and finally con-cluding transactions. Several commercial e-procurement applications already automate some aspects of the procurement processes, helping decision makers and employees complete their purchasing activity. But none take into account the key aspects of combining goods and services into one aggregated package. Agent-based systems are well equipped to address the challenges of multimarket package e-procurement. Indeed, goal driven autonomous agents aim to satisfy user requirements and preferences while being flexible enough to deal with the diversity of semantics amongst markets, suppliers, service providers, partners and individual sellers. A dis-tributed common shared space, called infospace, comprised of the negotiation exchanges and states, allows for agent coordination, market aggregation, and packages construction. This paper presents some issues and chal-lenges faced in multimarket package e-procurement, and puts forward an agent-based approach to deal with them Show less

Available resources can often be limited with regard to the number of demands. In this paper we propose an approach for solving this problem using the mechanisms of multi-item auctions for allocating the resources to a set of software agents. We consider the resource allocation problem as a market with vendor and buyer agents participating in a multi-item auction. The agents exhibit different acquisition capabilities which let them act differently depending on the current context or situation… Show more

Available resources can often be limited with regard to the number of demands. In this paper we propose an approach for solving this problem using the mechanisms of multi-item auctions for allocating the resources to a set of software agents. We consider the resource allocation problem as a market with vendor and buyer agents participating in a multi-item auction. The agents exhibit different acquisition capabilities which let them act differently depending on the current context or situation of the market. We present a model for this approach based on the English auction, and discuss experimental evidence of such a model. Show less