1、 外文翻译 Seamless Incorporation of Agents in an E-Commerce Intermediation PlatforMaterial Material Source： Fourth International Workshop on Mobile Agents for Telecommunication Applications Author: Irene Sygkouna , Maria Strimpakou , Francisco Valera , Anastasia Kaltabani , Luis Bellido , Enrique Vazque
2、z , Miltiades Anagnostou Abstract. 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
3、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 deta
4、iled design and implementation activities.Finally, the evaluation of the two interoperable technologies. 1 Introduction Over 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
5、as its relevance and relationship with particular business to business issues, have attracted considerable attention and generated quite comprehensive analyses1,2. Equally important experimentation and commercial exploitation of respective software systems 3 have been, in parallel, achieved. One of
6、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 commun
7、ication 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 i
8、nformation, which tends to be quite high. This kind 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 provider
9、s, 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
10、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 J2EETM4, 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 e
11、volution 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 dir
12、ect and efficient interaction with procurement software through the agentsability 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 pl
13、atform 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 conclusio
14、ns in terms of the two afore-mentioned software technologies evaluation. 2 Modeling an Intermediation E-Commerce Platform 2.1 Smart-EC Scenario In the proposed complex services transactions model we consider three basic domains that are the User Domain, the Service Provider Domain and the Broker Dom
15、ain, 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 ne
16、gotiation, 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. A simple service is defined to be provided as a whole by a provider. In the sequel, the functionality of the complex servi
17、ces 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 Ont
18、ology 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
19、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 sy
20、stem 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 (a
21、ffiliate 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 ident
22、ification 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 interaction
23、s 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 Principles In the middle of the J2EE architecture are Enterprise JavaBeansTM(EJBTM) 4, which are responsible for solving the business logic and da
24、ta 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 ar
25、chitecture (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 transparen
26、tly 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 pro
27、cessed 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 receive
28、d 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
29、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
30、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 solv
31、ed 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 rema
32、ining 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 th
33、e 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 for
34、Telecommunication 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。主要关注的问题是派生于两项新兴技术的结合使用，即 Java 2企业版（ J2EE）和移动代理技术（ MAT）。在本文中认为需要解决的关键问题有如下几方面：首先，拟议的制度方案。第二，所要求的功能定义和其通过基于 J2EE原则
35、为基础设计的服务组件。第三 ，代理商详细设计和实施开发。最后，两个互操作技术有关评价方面的开发。 1 引言 在过去的几年里，电子商务已经成为经济的一个日益重要的组成部分。在电子商务产业中，整个电子中介的主题，以及它与特定业务的相关性对企业问题的关系，已引起极大地关注，并产生相当全面的分析。同样重要的实验和相应的软件系统的商业开发已经在并行实现。 实际上，电子商务最重要的事情之一是实现各参与实体之间（通常是客户和供应商）可以使用任何可用的通信基础设施来进行准确的信息交换。与所有的互联网和内部网的通信服务使得目前的网络环境能够尽可 能的获取对大量信息的访问。如今，它必须找到一种机制，这种机制让客户
36、和供应商能够找到彼此并执行一个流畅的、准确的电子商务交易，尽量减少在寻找有用信息时所花费的时间，而通常他们所用的时间都是比较长久的。这种机制就是所谓的调解平台，通常包括为了规范与保护与电子商务相关的每一笔交易等一系列的规则，并面向减少从商业角度出发的客户与供应商之间的距离。 在本文中，我们提出了这样一个特定的中介平台，它兼容业务的商业模式和相应的系统实施要求，这被认为适用于一个多样化的业务域的数量中。它介绍了一些来自体系结构中的经验，这些经验 大多数是关于 Java 2企业版（ J2EE）和移动代理技术（ MAT）的。整个程序已经在 IST智能 EC项目里完成。 该 J2EETM是一个中间件平
37、台，在智能 EC项目开始的同时开始，所以很有可能跟随它演变并且与它的关系愈来愈密切。 J2EETM促进了开发、部署并执行我们所提出的分布式多层互联网应用程序。另一方面， MAT是一种先进的软件技术，而且它适用于电子商务，因为它支持与采购软件直接和高效地互动，并且通过代理的能力，实现网络节点之间移动的可能性。以上两种技术已经成功地实现集成和测试，在本文中有具体描述。 本文的结构 如下：第 2节描述了在该平台方案中 J2EE结构的术语条款以及其结构。第 3节的重点是该代理技术根据一项详细的设计进行执行的问题以及这两种技术的使用。最后，第 4节介绍了这两个前面所提到的软件技术的比较以及它们在评价等方
38、面的一些显著的结论。 2建模一个中介电子商务平台 2.1智能 EC方案 在提出的综合服务交易模型中，我们考虑三个领域中的一些用户，即用户域、服务供应商域和中间商域，它实际上代表了特定的域名经济平台的基本领域。在复杂的电子商务交易服务生命周期的主要阶段所提出的系统有以下几方面：第一，要求制定和解决方案的 前处理，第二，确定解决方案和双边谈判，第三，评价的解决方案以及最后，交易执行。拟议的系统能够处理一个简单的服务，并且组成一套复杂的服务。一个简单的服务被定义为一个由供应商全部提供。在结果中，能够描述对复杂的服务交易功能的电子商务系统。 客户成功访问系统后，他可以浏览系统结构提供的分层菜单请求服务
39、。由用户动态地制定一个复杂的服务请求所需要的知识是由本体技术提供的平台支持能力的手段。根据用户的要求、验证和确认， 系统调用其内部中介功能，以便找到一个可以接受的解决办法。一个解决方案是定义为提供集（由服务供应商作出的 ），是能够满足用户要求的。明确地说，就是每个简单的组成请求服务，系统应该识别出相应的标识（即零个、一个或多个）的要求，该账户的属性值在申请表中选择。 当身份识别阶段完成之后，系统就会呈现给用户相应的解决方案。该解决方案可提交依据客户的喜欢而定的几种方法。该平台的设计，是为了通过允许广泛的支持和在线访问促成资源 （加盟服务提供商） 和维修服务类的供应商的合作。所描述的中介平台的客
40、户，以下简称为用户，对于没有找到满意的服务价值，该用户可能需要要重新界定其服务的相关属性。在这种情况下，系统将验证更新的要求，并解决新的 解决方案识别过程，直到找到一个令人满意的解决办法。一旦提出的解决方案已经被用户接受，在接下来的阶段就是交易执行阶段的。在这最后的阶段，相应的服务平台进行预约与保留，并与服务提供商领域进行必要的相互作用，以便进行真正的电子商务服务提供和交付。 2.2基于 J2EE原则的智能 EC体系结构 在 J2EE体系结构中的企业 JavaBeansTM（ EJBTM），是解决业务逻辑和数据应用的企业准入工作。它们是可重复使用的组件，开发人员可以编码对象几乎任何必要的功能（
41、通过会议或实体 Bean），并且可以由客户端程序访问和运行在 J2EE服务器上。 继智能 EC这一动作之后，在智能 EC中一个三层的基于 J2EE的三层体系结构（客户端，服务器和信息服务）相继使用。这样一来，客户端只需处理用户界面，并且它们没有查询数据库的权限，执行复杂的业务规则，或是连接到传统应用程序，因为中间层服务器为他们做这些工作时是透明的。 智能 EC支持客户多样性的异构，如 Web浏览器和手持设备。这些客户均设有普通的 HTML 页面和 WML 页面（没有 Java 小应用程序或是脚本语言的使用），服务器的访问是通过 HTML和 WML，由一个 servelet处理，并且以中间层的形
42、式进 行。 作为信息入口点，中间层和客户端从 EJB的这个 servlet行为负责提供该项目的商业逻辑。其中之一，系统控制程序，是分析从 servlet接收和调度相应的行动 XML 流，其他（用户处理、处理程序的提供、登录）与程序类负责。这些 XML 信息交流，与 XSL（可扩展样式表语言）文件一同使系统独立于访问设备。 有需要检索外部数据时，两个特殊的程序是用来联系结构的第三层：本体的处理程序能够与本体存储的知识相交互以及数据集中控制器是特定的数据库访问（用户和供应商简介和目录查询或更新），使其余的模块不必应付有关数据库的问题 。最后，有三个以上的程序来完成系统：复杂的业务处理程序，即能够将复杂的业务分解成简单的要求，建立从用户的全局要求，使他们可以由不同的供应商中得到解决题，虽然他们最终要求作为一个整体提高给用户；解决方案生成器（ SB）的程序分类目录检索，以选择最能提供与用户请求；交易处理程序（ TH）的程序适合完成交易周期。 剩下的这部分，也就是远程处理器，负责系统和外部附属供应商的连接。具体来说就是，远程处理器的是负责建立和委托代理商的移动供应商（ MPA），从而形成智能电子商务和各附属供应商之间的相互影响。在各个附属供应商的服 务范围内，已认证的两个代理商分别被称为静态代理商（ SAPA）和移动代理商（ MAPA）。
