Matchmaking Shell: A Shell for Supporting Service Negotiation

Abstract

Matchmaking is a key issue in electronic negotiation scenarios, and is often defined as the automatic ranking of a set of offers with reference to a set of requests. Matchmaking is often an important phase in any e-negotiation system, as it enables the selection of suitable participants between which negotation should take place. We describe a generic MatchMaking Shell which enables service independent matchmaking, and one which is able to support matching via user defined algorithms. A definition of this shell and a prototype implementation are described. Finally, an evaluation to determine its effectiveness by measuring the performance and the matchmaking quality within a on-line bookshop is presented.

Keywords: service negotiation, service matchmaking, matchmaking performance analysis