Title: Business transaction coordination in multi-agent financial web services

Authors: Sujan Pradhan, Hongen Lu

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia. ' Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia

Abstract: This paper proposes to extend the capability of Web Services (WS) by assigning it a role of a FIPA-compliant software agent to coordinate business transactions. Most current financial web applications utilise WS with limitation because it does not provide the needed transaction-heavy dynamism. However, this maybe possible if a WS can behave like intelligent software agents; one way to solve this would be to use wrappers around WS. The benefits of WS-agent paradigm are manifold; first, agents have the capability to conduct conversation-like contract negotiations, which are critical during coordination of business transactions; second, agents can build up its intelligence and knowledge-base over time; third, agent by definition has the ability to act autonomously to almost any situation. We propose to use SOAP as the Agent Communication Language (ACL). This would not only make it simpler to communicate among agents but it would also have all the benefits of SOAP – seamless integration, interoperability, lightweight, and language and platform independent.

Keywords: Web Services; web service transactions; financial services; soap messaging; multi-agent systems; agent-based systems; software agents; business transactions; intelligent agents; agent communication language; integration; interoperability; coordination.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWGS.2007.012636

International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 2007 Vol.3 No.1, pp.38 - 57

Published online: 01 Mar 2007 *

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