Electronic Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (4-Volumes) P19 pptx

A Knowledge Management Approach to Improving E-Business Collaboration Collaborative Systems: A computer-based system that is accessed and used by more than one organisation to support b

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A Knowledge Management Approach to Improving E-Business Collaboration

increasingly automated), organisations need to

seek ways to harness and exploit the knowledge of

their more precious resource, that is, employees

The human resource strategy needs to provide

opportunities for staff to develop ‘know-why’

(Evans, 2003) by facilitating communication

between teams by creating the time, space, and

reward systems to develop a ‘care-why’ culture

CONCLUSION

Collaborative systems are a vital component of

modern business Technology provides a means

of communication, facilitating the transmission

of information and the integration of processes

between organisations However, the value from

e-relationships is dependent upon the ability to

share, create, and implement knowledge

em-bedded within the information communicated

Knowledge is contextual and situated within

communities of practice Collaborative

relation-ships require a new community to be established

which bridges the cultures of the workers in the

partnership organisations Collaboration requires

trust; in the absence of face-to-face interaction

trust emerges from recurrent actions If e-business

systems are developed on espoused requirements

rather than practice, problems are likely to occur

which may generate mistrust and limit the

col-laboration An approach to improving the ability

of collaborative information systems to support

authentic work practice is proposed This places

the recurring activities that comprise professional

practice and work culture at the centre of an

en-quiry about distributed knowledge in e-business

collaboration and provides a multilevel approach

to begin an exploration into socially embedded

knowledge-based collaborative work processes

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Cox, S A., Krasniewicz, J A., Perkins, J S.,

& Cox, J A (2006, September) Modeling the organizational transformation associated with implementing e-business collaborative systems

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Davenport, T H., DeLong, D W., & Beers, M D (1998) Successful knowledge management

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DeLong, D W., & Fahey, L (2000) Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management

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Dingley, S., Shah, H., & Golder, P (2000) Tribes of

users and systems developers Australian Journal

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(QJHVWUĘP<Learning by expanding: An

activity-theoretical approach to developmental research Helsinki: Oreinta-Konsulti.

(QJHVWUĘP < ([SDQVLYH OHDUQLQJ DW work: Toward an activity theoretical

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Evans, C (2003) Structures, roles and responsi-bilities in a knowledge-centric culture In C Evans

(Ed.), Managing for knowledge: HR’s strategic

role Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Fahey, F., Srivastava, R., Sharon, J S., & Smith,

D E (2001) Linking e-business and operating processes: The role of knowledge management

IBM Systems Journal, 40(4), 889-907.

Graham, G., & Hardaker, G (2000) Supply-chain

management across the Internet International

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Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics,

30(34), 286-296.

Grover, V., & Davenport, T H (2001) General

perspective on knowledge management:

Foster-ing a research agenda Journal of Management

Information Systems, 18(1), 5-21.

Handy, C (1995, May) Trust and the virtual

or-ganization Harvard Business Review, 40-49.

Hofstede, G (1991) Cultures and organizations:

Software of the mind Intercultural cooperation

and its importance for survival Maidenhead:

McGraw-Hill

John-Steiner, V., Weber R J., & Minnis, M

(1998) The challenge of studying collaboration

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773-783

Kirchmer, M (2004) E-Business process

net-works: Successful value chains through standards

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17(1), 20-30.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E (1991) Situated learning:

Legitimate peripheral participation Cambridge

University Press

Lee, L L (2005) Balancing business process

with business practice for organizational

advan-tage Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(1),

29-41

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Systems Journal, 9, 103-115.

Martin, C (1999) Net future New York:

Mc-Graw-Hill

Mohamed, M., Stankosky, M., & Murray, A

(2006) Knowledge management and information

technology: Can they work in perfect harmony?

Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(3),

103-116

Nahapiet, J., Gratton, L., & Rocha, H O (2005)

Knowledge and relationships: When cooperation

is the norm European Management Review, 2,

3-14

Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H (1995) The

knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation New York:

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Oliver, S., & Kandadi, K R (2006) How to develop knowledge culture in organizations? A multiple case study of large distributed

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Planning, 21(2), 115-122.

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Manag-ing and usManag-ing information systems: A strategic approach Chichester: John Wiley.

Sahay, B S (2003) Supply chain collaboration:

The key to value creation Work Study, 52(2),

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:DUG - *ULI¿WKV 3 :KLWPRUH 3

Strategic planning for information systems (2nd

ed.) Chichester: John Wiley

Wenger, H (1998) Communities of practice.

Cambridge University Press

KEY TERMS

Collaborative Practice: The ways of working

which emerge between communities of practice

as they work towards the achievement of com-mon goals

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Collaborative Systems: A computer-based

system that is accessed and used by more than

one organisation to support business transactions

in the supply chain The system allows data to be

automatically updated in a partner organisation’s

systems during the processing of a transaction

Community of Practice: The emergent

pro-cess of social learning as a group of people with

shared values, beliefs, and goals, work together

towards a common aim

E-Business Processes: The explicit

proce-dures and routine decisions supported by data

and information communicated electronically

ZLWKLQ LQWHU¿UP QHWZRUNV WR VXSSRUW EXVLQHVV

transactions and value added activities

E-Collaboration: The use of information

technology to establish, facilitate, and sustain

co-operation between two geographically dispersed

parties, who have common goals, to enable them

WRZRUNWRJHWKHUIRUPXWXDOEHQH¿W

E-Community: The development of shared

purpose, values, and experience resulting in the formation of trust between a group of people who may be geographically dispersed and communi-cate mainly via electronic means

Knowledge Workers: A person who works

with data, information, and knowledge rather than physical components

Practice-Centric: The focus on the way in

which knowledge workers carry out tasks based

on their learning and experience of a situation, addressing anomalies or omissions that may exist

in formalised business processes

Situated Knowledge: Knowledge that

HPHUJHV IURP H[SHULHQFH UHODWLQJ WR VSHFL¿F business practices

Social Activity Theory: The study of authentic

practice arising from communities of knowledge workers engaged in business practice

This work was previously published in the Encyclopedia of Human Resources Information Systems: Challenges in e-HRM, edited by T Torres-Coronas and M Arias-Oliva, pp 598-604, copyright 2009 by Information Science Reference (an imprint

of IGI Global).

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Chapter 1.9

Linking Businesses for Competitive Advantage:

A Mobile Agent-Based Approach

Tong-Seng Quah

Nanyang Technological University, Republic of Singapore

Chye-Huang Leow

Singapore Polytechnic, Republic of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In a highly competitive business environment,

every organization is trying to achieve more using

fewer resources This is particularly true in this

Internet era, where many businesses are moving

IURP³EULFNDQGPRUWDU´EDVHGRSHUDWLRQWRZDUGV

having at least an Internet presence, where

e-com-merce is fast gaining acceptance Recent advances

in mobile agent technology promise yet another

powerful tool to gain competitive advantage—to

deliver cost-effective services through utilizing

Internet infrastructure Such a development helps

both individuals and organizations achieve higher

productivity at lower cost In this chapter, the

authors describe an intelligent mobile agent-based

system that links hotels and restaurants to provide

gourmet goers with a convenient way of searching

for their choice restaurants The system sends off

intelligent mobile agents to automatically roam

the Internet, gather the relevant information about food and services from participating restaurants, and provide the most optimized selection as sug-gestions to help the users make their meals deci-sion This greatly reduces information overload for the users Participating business establishments DOVREHQH¿WWKURXJKLQFUHDVHGEXVLQHVV

INTRODUCTION

Agent-based systems have gained prominence over the last few years One of the most interest-ing categories of agents is mobile agents (Lange

& Oshima, 1998) Unlike static agents, which are restricted to operate within a single machine or address space, mobile agents have the ability to migrate over the network, execute tasks at each location and potentially interact with other agents that cross their paths Advantages of mobile agents

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Linking Businesses for Competitive Advantage

include their ability to reduce network usage,

increase asynchrony between clients and

serv-HUVDGGFOLHQWVSHFL¿HGIXQFWLRQDOLW\WRVHUYHUV

and introduce concurrency These features help

lower computing costs of modern businesses as

ZHOODVEHWWHUPDQDJHQHWZRUNWUDI¿FDVLOOXV-trated below

Many online business transactions involve

processes that require extensive database searches

and matches For example, users of an online

bookstore are likely to view various catalogs,

matching descriptions with preferences they have

in mind before deciding which books to purchase

$VVXFKLQIRUPDWLRQVHDUFKDQG¿OWHULQJDSSOLFD-tions often download and process large amounts

of server-resident information and generate

comparatively small amounts of result data The

scenario is greatly different with a mobile

agent-based system, where mobile agents move to and

execute on server machines and access server

data without using the network, reducing

band-width requirements Many of today’s applications

involve repeated client-server interactions, which

require either maintaining a network connection

over an extended period or making several

sepa-rate requests If mobile agents are used instead,

the client system does not have to maintain a

network connection when its agents access and

process information This permits increased

asynchrony between the client and server This

feature is especially useful for mobile computers

(such as laptops and PDAs), which typically have

low-bandwidth, unreliable connections to the

network and are often switched off to save power

consumption Also, the repeated client-server

interactions are reduced to two agent-transfer

operations, reducing the frequency of network

usage, as well

An example of a user-level application would

be an electronic marketplace Vendors can set up

online shops, with products, services or

informa-tion for sale A customer’s agent would carry

a shopping list along with a set of preferences,

YLVLWYDULRXVVHOOHUV¿QGWKHEHVWGHDOEDVHGRQ

user preferences and purchase the product using digital forms of cash An added advantage of such

a system is that businesses may also be linked

up to form a chain, such that mobile agents may move between stores within a business chain to make their purchases Such a setup will enhance the competitive advantages of participating online stores

Apart from mobility, a mobile agent-based sys-tem will need mechanisms for restricted resource access, secure electronic commerce, protection

of agent data, robustness and user control over roaming agents These will be discussed in later sections

MOBILE AGENTS: ISSUES AND DEVELOPMENTS

Agents-Enabled Electronic Commerce

Mobile agents offer a number of useful possibili-ties:

• The agent can express the application-level protocol required to perform a transaction This includes dialogs on choices and op-WLRQVFRQ¿JXUDWLRQVDYDLODELOLW\GHOLYHU\ methods and opportunities for setting up,

as well as complete and accurate capture

of information required by the vendor in a particular format Mobile agents technology

is a plausible method for vendors to distribute the client end of a transaction protocol in a device-independent way

• Alternatively, the mobile agent may be able

to present the consumer’s desire as a query to

a number of potential vendors to determine degree of match, price, availability and so forth

• The agent may also be able to consult a

³FRQVXPHUJXLGH´RURWKHUDGYLVRUEHIRUH making a purchase

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• The agent can provide a secure vehicle for

the transaction, providing bilateral

authen-tication and privacy

• The agent can provide a transaction

cur-rency for settlement The agent’s account is

presumably reconciled periodically against

³UHDO´PRQH\

To facilitate the development of mobile agents

distributed applications, and to overcome some

problems and issues that arise from this approach,

some requirements must be addressed Systems

that support the use of the mobile agent paradigm

have to provide a basic set of services and

char-acteristics These will be discussed later

Achievable Competitive Advantages

Using Mobile Agent-Based

E-Commerce Platforms

While many potential competitive advantages

can be achieved using a mobile agent-based

e-commerce system, the following are being

highlighted:

Enterprises may link up to provide a wider

range of products and services to customers

This will likely attract a larger customer

EDVHDQGEHQH¿WVDOOSDUWLHVLQYROYHG)RU

example, by linking up a hotel server with

restaurant chain servers, guests in the hotel

get the impression of a wider range of cutlery

service available The restaurants, on the

other hand, make their presence noticed and

are likely to get more business All these can

be achieved by the mobile agent applications

³ZHDYLQJ´WKURXJKWKHVHUYHUVWRUHWULHYH

and recommend cutlery establishments that

match the hotel guests’ preferences

busi-nesses have stores and shop-fronts at multiple

locations To minimize overstocking of

LQYHQWRULHVDQGWLHXSSUHFLRXVFDVKÀRZ

many businesses keep their inventory low However, this risks loss of sales when a customer wants goods that are out of stock

at a certain branch store The situation can

be saved if such businesses link up their store-front computers using a mobile agent-based system Such a system will enable a VKRSNHHSHUWR¿QGWKHDYDLODELOLW\RIFHUWDLQ stock that matches a customer’s request, thus capturing sales instead of letting a customer walk out of the shop and be disappointed

deci-sion making: Accessibility to information

are crucial for important decision making such as loan approval—especially if the quantum is big Using this example, credit providers may join a bureau which captures the ‘worthiness’ of private individuals An agent-based system may be deployed to consolidate the credit situations of a loan applicant with various banks by utilizing the restricted access rights to the bureau controlled databases This will help the ORDQDSSURYLQJRI¿FHUVWRPDNHLQIRUPHG decision and hence reduces bad debt for the lenders

Agent Mobility

The primary identifying characteristics of mobile agents is their ability to autonomously migrate from host to host Thus, support for agent mo-bility is a fundamental requirement of the agent infrastructure An agent can request its host server to transport it to some remote destination The agent server must then deactivate the agent, capture its state and transmit it to the server at the remote host The destination server must restore the agent state and reactivate it at the remote host, thus completing the migration

The state of an agent includes all its data, as well as the execution state of its thread At the lowest level, this is represented by its execution context and call-stack If this can be captured

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and transmitted along with the agent, the

destina-tion server can reactivate the thread at precisely

the point where it requested the migration An

alternative is to capture the execution state at a

KLJKHUOHYHOLQWHUPVRIDSSOLFDWLRQGH¿QHGDJHQW

data The agent code can then direct the control

ÀRZDSSURSULDWHO\ZKHQWKHVWDWHLVUHVWRUHGDW

the destination

Security Issues

The introduction of mobile agent code in a network

raises several security issues In an open network,

such as the Internet, it is entirely possible that the

agent and server belong to different

administra-tion domains In such cases, they will have much

lower levels of mutual trust Servers are exposed

to the risk of system penetration by malicious

agents, analogous to viruses and Trojan horses

Security-related requirements are discussed in

the following sections

Privacy and Integrity

Agents carry their own code and data with them

as they traverse the network Parts of their state

may be sensitive and need to be kept secret when

the agent travels on the network For example,

a shopper agent may carry its owner’s credit

card number or personal preferences The agent

transport protocol needs to provide privacy to

prevent eavesdroppers from acquiring sensitive

information Also, an agent may not trust all

serv-ers equally We need a mechanism to selectively

reveal different portions of the agent state to

different servers For example, a shopping agent

may solicit quotations from various vendors To

ensure fairness, one vendor’s quotation must not

EHUHDGDEOHRUPRGL¿DEOHE\RWKHUV

$VHFXULW\EUHDFKFRXOGUHVXOWLQWKHPRGL¿FD-tion of the agent’s code as it traverses the network

We need some means of verifying that an agent’s

code is unaltered during transit across a distrusted

network or after visiting a distrusted server An

agent’s state typically needs to be updated dur-ing its journey so it can collect information from servers While we cannot assume that all servers visited are benign, we can provide mechanisms that allow such tampering to be detected

Cryptographic mechanisms can be used to provide a secure communication facility, which

an agent can use to communicate with its home site, or servers can use to transport agents safely across distrusted networks Selective revealing

of state can be accomplished by encrypting dif-ferent parts of the state with difdif-ferent public keys belonging to the servers allowed to access those parts of the state Mechanisms such as seals can

be used to detect any tampering of agent code

Authentication

When an agent attempts to transport itself to

a remote server, the server needs to ascertain the identity of the agent’s owner to decide what rights and privileges the agent will be given in the server’s environment A vendor’s server needs

to know the visiting agent’s identity to determine which user to charge for service rendered Con-versely, when an agent migrates to a server, it needs some assurance of the identity of the server itself before it reveals any of its sensitive data to the server Digital signature systems have been used to develop mutual authentication schemes

To verify signatures, agents and servers need to reliably know the signing entity’s public key This UHTXLUHVDNH\FHUWL¿FDWLRQLQIUDVWUXFWXUH3XEOLF NH\VFHUWL¿HGE\WUXVWHGDJHQFLHVFDQEHSRVWHG

in network-wide directories that can be accessed

by agents and servers

Authorization and Access Control

$XWKRUL]DWLRQLVWKHJUDQWLQJRIVSHFL¿FUHVRXUFH DFFHVVULJKWVWRVSHFL¿FSULQFLSOHVVXFKDVRZQ-ers of agents) Some principals are more trusted than others, and thus, their agents can be granted less-restrictive access This involves specifying

Trang 8

policies for granting access to resources based

either on identities of principals, their roles in an

RUJDQL]DWLRQRUWKHLUVHFXULW\FODVVL¿FDWLRQ

Metering and Charging Mechanisms

When agents travel on a network, they consume

resources, such as CPU time, disk space and so

forth at different servers These servers may

legitimately expect to be reimbursed monetarily

for providing such resources Also, agents may

access value-added services—information and

so forth—provided by other agents, which could

also expect payment in return For example, in

a marketplace, users can send agents to conduct

purchases on their behalf Thus, mechanisms are

needed so that an agent can carry digital cash and

use it to pay for resources used by it Operating

system-level support may be needed for

meter-ing of resource usage, such as the CPU time used

by an agent or the amount of disk space needed

during its visit

Agent Monitoring and Control

An agent’s parent application may need to monitor

the agent’s status while it executes on a remote

host If exceptions or errors occur during the

agent’s execution, the application may need to

terminate the agent This involves tracking the

current location of the agent and requesting its

host server to kill it

Similarly, the agent owner may simply recall its

agent back to its home site and allow it to continue

executing there This is equivalent to forcing the

agent to execute a migrate call to its home site The

owner can use an event mechanism to signal the

agent or raise an exception remotely The agent’s

event/exception handler can respond by migrating

home This capability of remotely terminating

and recalling agents raises security issues—only

an agent’s owner should have the authority to

terminate it Thus, some authentication functions

need to be built into these primitives; that is, the

system must ensure that the entity attempting to control the agent is indeed its owner, or has been authorized by the owner to do so

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF E-COMMERCE REQUIREMENTS, AGLETS, AND HP WEB SERVICES

Finally, a set of e-commerce requirements will be GH¿QHGWRDQDO\VH$JOHWV¶DQG+3:HE6HUYLFHV¶ FDSDELOLWLHV WR IXO¿OO WKHP 7KH HFRPPHUFH requirements range from simple information H[FKDQJHDQGEXONGDWDWUDQVIHUWRVHFXUH¿UH-wall traversal, close collaboration and dynamic relationship requirements It will be shown where each technology has its advantages and domains This comparison also shows how the combina-tion of both technologies can provide combined advantages and strengths

Information Exchange in E-Commerce, Aglets, and

HP Web Services

Many of today’s e-commerce applications include complex business processes with a large number of concurrent tasks These tasks may persist for a long duration; they may require long waiting times and could be nested within other tasks Additionally, they are highly asynchronous, expose continues FKDQJHVDQGPD\FRQ¿JXUHRQWKHÀ\

7KXV DQ\ ÀDW FRQYHUVDWLRQ PDQDJHPHQW like message exchange, lacks the scalability for handling and tracking such sizable applications Unfortunately, message exchange is the way Aglets interact These messages always follow the same basic scheme They are composed of a

³PHVVDJHW\SH´LQIRUPRIDVWULQJDQGD³PHV-sage content”, which can be any type of object However, they do not support the demands of modern e-commerce

Any more complex transactions in Aglets are usually implemented through a centralized

Trang 9

uling architecture, where one Aglet host serves a

coordination unit and does the scheduling,

moni-toring and execution control This may work well

within one single enterprise, but causes serious

problems for inter-enterprise transactions

HP Web Services, on the other hand, evolved

from the Distributed Computing paradigm, which

is primarily involved in handling such

transac-tions The e-brokering system was added on top of

that, and it closely follows the e-commerce model

Business tasks are modeled as services and can

be composed through other lower-level nested

services A typical complex HP Web Services

request is broken down into simpler requests

The set of service providers for each of these

simple requests is then dynamically discovered

Subsequently, the best match is invoked, and

its execution mediated This model used by HP

:HE 6HUYLFHV ¿WV H[DFWO\ LQWR WKH GHPDQGV RI

e-commerce

Bulk Data Transfer in E-Commerce,

Aglets, and HP Web Services

As personalized, continuously running and

semi-autonomous entities, Aglets can be used to

mediate users and servers to automate a number

of time-consuming tasks in e-commerce

How-ever, again, Aglets communicate via message

exchange, which may not be suitable for bulk data

exchange Routing and caching a large amount of

data imposes a considerable burden for Aglets

For example, moving data between an operational

database and a data warehouse via an Aglet is

very unlikely

HP Web Services can provide asynchronous

and synchronous communication in the same

en-vironment Bulk data transfer is an easy task for

HP Web Services, as well as for other distributed

computing environments, like CORBA and RMI

,W¿WVFORVHO\LQWRGLVWULEXWHGFRPSXWLQJDQGLV

a direct extension from Networking Transport

Protocols (like TCP/IP)

Extensible Mark-up Language (XML)

as Joint Communication Language

in Aglets and HP Web Services

In today’s technical world, many different domain VSHFL¿FRQWRORJLHV+HZOHWW3DFNDUGHDUH used Ontology refers to the common vocabulary DQGDJUHHGVHPDQWLFVVSHFL¿FIRUDVXEMHFWGRPDLQ Both HP Web Services and Aglets mainly focus

on establishment of collaboration, mediation and providing services They thereby aim at generic solutions to be applied across many different sectors of businesses However, a banking institu-tion may use an entirely different ontology than

a CD retailer

Currently, XML is in the process of solving this problem Through the use of Document Type 'H¿QLWLRQ'7'HDFKVHFWRUFDQFUHDWHLWVRZQ VHPDQWLFWKDW¿WVLQGLYLGXDOQHHGVDQG\HWUHPDLQV generally usable across sector boundaries The power of XML and its role in e-commerce have been widely recognized Consequently, HP Web Services provides support for XML in its Ap-plication Programming Interface (API)

The software developed during this project enables communication between Aglets and HP Web Services The software can receive and send Aglet messages as well as deploy HP Web Services And it exports all these functionalities LQWKHIRUPRIKDQG\PRGXOHVWREHFRQ¿JXUHG WRJHWKHU WR ¿W LQGLYLGXDO QHHGV )XUWKHUPRUH reuse was one of the major design considerations for this project The software could be easily extended with additional modules to implement

a proxy between the Aglet world, HP Web Ser-vices and the Internet A DTD-based interpreter VKRXOG FORVHO\ IXO¿OO WKHVH UHTXLUHPHQWV 7KLV would enable document-driven Aglet cooperation Moreover, it would allow Aglets to share ontology (Hewlett Packard, 2000e) for multiple or even dynamic domains In this way, the cooperation

of dynamic Aglets would support plug-and-play

commerce—mediating businesses that are built on

Trang 10

one another’s service Aglets would acquire some

of the key functionalities of HP Web Services

Firewalls in Aglets and HP Web

Services

Internet-based e-commerce involves multiple

en-WHUSULVHVVHSDUDWHGE\¿UHZDOOVIntra-enterprise

process management differs from inter-enterprise

SURFHVV PDQDJHPHQW VLJQL¿FDQWO\ 'LIIHUHQW

HQWHUSULVHVDUHQRWRQO\VHSDUDWHGE\¿UHZDOOV

but also have self-interests and individual data

sharing scopes When they are involved in a

busi-ness process, they are unlikely to trust and rely

RQ D FHQWUDOL]HG ZRUNÀRZ VHUYHU 5DWKHU WKH\

need support for peer-to-peer interactions This

has become the major impendence for using the

FRQYHQWLRQDO FHQWUDOL]HG ZRUNÀRZ V\VWHPV IRU

inter-enterprise e-commerce automation

2QHGLI¿FXOW\IRUWKH$JOHWWHFKQRORJ\WR¿W

into this picture consists in the limitation of its

coordination model HP Web Services, on the

other hand, has Firewall Traversal as one of its

standard services Since HP Web Services has its

roots in distributed operating systems research,

LWDOVRKDVDQLQWHJUDWHGVXSSRUWIRU¿QHJUDLQHG

access control The HP Web Services Engine can

be inserted at multiple points in the chain between

clients and remote services These remote services

will act and look just like a local service, since

the HP Web Services Engine acts like a kernel

Thus, the administrator can see and control

ac-FHVVWRVHUYLFHVLQVLGHKLVQHWZRUNDQG¿UHZDOO

traversal is supported

Collaboration in E-Commerce, Aglets

and HP Web Services

An e-commerce scenario typically involves the

following activities: identifying requirements,

brokering products, brokering vendors,

negoti-ating deals, or making purchase and payment

transactions Today, these activities are initiated

and executed by humans

Using Aglets or, in general, Mobile Agents technology, to support e-commerce automation is

a promising direction Aglets could be personal-ized, continuously running and semi-autonomous, driven by a set of beliefs, desires and intentions

(BDI) They could be used to mediate users and

servers to automate a number of the most time-consuming tasks in e-commerce with enhanced parallelism

HP Web Services was primarily designed for enabling the creation of dynamic, Internet-based business relationships through the ad hoc discov-ery and interaction of e-services E-services in-clude applications, computing resources, business processes and information, delivered securely over the Internet The HP Web Services Framework 6SHFL¿FDWLRQ 6)6 GH¿QHV VWDQGDUG EXVLQHVV interactions and conventions as XML documents that allow e-services to dynamically discover and negotiate with each other and compose themselves into more complex services

Dynamics in E-Commerce, Aglets and HP Web Services

E-commerce applications operate in a distributed computing environment, involving multiple par-ties with dynamic availability and a large number

of heterogeneous information sources with evolv-ing contents Dynamic relationships among a large number of autonomous service requesters, brokers and providers is common A business partner-ship (e.g., between suppliers, resellers, brokers and customers) is often created dynamically and maintained only for the required duration, such

as a single transaction E-commerce activities typically rely on distributed and autonomous tasks for dealing with such operational dynamics Thus,

e-commerce is a plug-and-play environment

Ser-vices need to be provided on demand To support such dynamics, an e-commerce infrastructure must support the cooperation of loosely coupled e-business systems