Developing Agents for Electronic Commerce A Constructive Approach

Logic Programming (LP) and specially Extended Logic Programming (ELP) provides a powerful tool for the development of systems that, besides being mathematically correct (and subject to proof) are easy to prototype. Electronic Commerce (EC) poses new challenges in the areas of Knowledge Representation (KR) and Formal Modeling. Indeed, a specific agent architecture is necessary as the basis for a more constructive approach to the problem which, in this work, will be based on the Experience-Based Mediator (EBM) agent concept. Argument-based negotiation among agents has much to gain from the use of logical mechanisms. Although logic has been successfully used in the areas of argumentation (specially, legal argumentation), the reasoning process that happens before such argumentation is rarely stated. In EC scenarios, such process takes into account features such as temporality, priorities, delegation, gratitude and agreement, leading to a feasible EC system.