Service Contract Negotiation - Agent-Based Support for Open Service Environments

An Open Service Architecture is a framework that supports an open set of users to subscribe to, and pay for, an open set of services. Such architectures provide an excellent application area for Agent Oriented Programming. It is useful to describe the collaboration between agents in terms of Service Contracts, that agents can form dynamically through negotiation. The negotiation of Service Contracts poses different requirements on Agent Architectures than those that current frameworks for Agent Oriented Programming address. In particular, agents must both be able to negotiate what services should be provided as well as payment schemas. I discuss the requirements on agent collaboration and communication imposed by negotiation of Service Contracts, and analyse to what extent existing approaches to Agent Oriented Programming support such negotiation.