The purpose of the Auction Manager Agent (AMA) is both to generate and
track auctions as well as to serve as a tool for exploring alternative
market configurations. Currently the AMA is used to automate the
process of creating a well-specified market. Agents request auctions
for the services they sell/buy from the AMA. Using the SCA, the AMA
determines which auctions sell these services. If one or more such
auctions exist, then the agent is notified of their agent-ids.
Otherwise, the AMA creates one and then informs the requesting agent
of its location. Since the AMA uses the SCA to generalize service
descriptions, the description sent by the agent does not have to
exactly match the auction's service description.
This simple behavior provides a good deal of functionality. However,
in the future, since the number of possible markets in UMDL is
virtually unbounded, we will need to account for market overhead costs
and recommend the most appropriate auctions.
Jose M. Vidal
jmvidal@umich.edu
Tue Sep 30 14:35:40 EDT 1997