Developing Context-Independent E-Negotiation Systems using Software Protocol and Model-View- Controller Design Pattern

A major challenge in e-negotiation systems (ENS) is that the context of negotiation such as negotiators’ characteristics, negotiation processes and system support varies in each case. This context dependency makes it difficult to apply a single ENS to a wide variety of negotiations. In this paper, to mitigate the context dependency issue, we propose to adopt the componentoriented approach and the Model-View-Controller design pattern in order to develop a generic ENS platform that can run multiple ENS’s. In this approach, an ENS is developed first by designing a high level e-negotiation protocol which specifies which page composer should be called at each state. A page composer contains the logic controlling integration of the model components (e.g. queries and computation modules) and view components (e.g. display text and formatting). Restriction or guidance of negotiation activities can be implemented by restricting or allowing a set of functionalities on a page and/or routing them to a different page. With this approach, the efforts to develop and modify ENS can be significantly reduced. Validity and usefulness of our approach is proved by re-developing two existing ENS’s SimpleNS and Inspire – on a generic platform called Invite, which can execute e-negotiation protocols.