Auction theory its implementation and software

agents

What auction means?• An auction is a process of buying and

selling goods or services.• An Auction is where property is sold at a

specific time and place to the highestbidder.

• Auctions elicit information about howmuch buyers are willing to pay.

• A public sale in which goods or property aresold to the highest bidder.

Traditional auction

Online auction

Types of auction• English auction : Participants bid openly against

one another, with each subsequent bid requiredto be higher than the previous bid. Sometimesthe auctioneer sets a minimum amount by whichthe next bid must exceed the current highest bid.

• Dutch auction : the auctioneer begins with a highasking price for some quantity of like items; theprice is lowered until a participant is willing toaccept the auctioneer's price for some quantity ofthe goods in the lot or until the seller's reserveprice is met.

Continued…

• Blind auction(sealed first price auction) : In thistype of auction all bidders simultaneously submitsealed bids so that no bidder knows the bid of anyother participant. The highest bidder pays theprice they submitted.

• Vickrey auction(Sealed-bid second price auction)This is identical to the sealed first-price auctionexcept that the winning bidder pays the second-highest bid rather than his or her own.

Popular auction sites

Auction System

• Auction systems are a major component of the electronic

marketplace that allow users at any site to sell and buy

products.

• The sellers set up auctions for their products while the

purchaser who bids the highest amount wins the right to

purchase the product in an auction.

AgentsSystem uses three kinds of agents –

1. PurchaserAgent :- It requires bidding to buy and

suggests a proper bidding price by analyzing the bidding

history of the bidding competitor.

2. SellerAgent :- It provides the function of registering

goods for an auction to the sellers.

3. FacilitatorAgent :- It plays the role of an auctioneer and

enables a bidder to look at the other person’s auction

history while bidding for and buying a product.

Components

The software components that are a part of the auction system are

:-

• The Certification component is used to validate the user trying

to log into the system.

• A seller enters products into the system by using the

Registration Good component.

• Purchaser and Seller components manage information related to

the auctions of the purchaser and the seller.

• The Negotiation component manages the auction. If a bidder

arrives at the time of the auction close or a bidder who suggests

the highest price exists, the auction will be closed. When an

auction closes, the data record of the auction transfers to the

Management History Auction component.

Cont’d

• The Management History Auction component shows the

previous auction record of the auctioneer conducting the

current auction.

• The DataBase component saves the relevant data pertaining

to the current auction (e.g. the price of products and

contents) separately in the database.

• Purchaser decides the next bid after confirmation of the end

price that has been suggested so far from the DataBase

component using the Method of Bidding component.

Scenario of auction process

Implementation of Auctions

StartUp Screen

Registration

Browsing Auction

Getting Details for an Auction

Creating New Auction

Ending of an Auction

Email Notification Of Seller/ Auction

Startup ScreenCommand:-

Java –jar auctionClient

Registration

Browsing Auctions

Category Tree

Created dynamically upon the creation of client program and

contain all the auction categories.

Approach to create and populate tree :-

- Entry in the database contains id,category name, and no of

parent category.

- Rows are ordered by id so that first create basic category

and fill the tree with the leaves.

Brief Description of Available Items

Getting Details of the Auction

Creating new auction

Ending of Auction

There is a column in the AuctionTBL which holds the state of

that current auction as a bool variable.

When auction is created,this variable is set to active.

The expired auction checking thread which is activated every

minute check the ending time of all active auctions against the

current time and changes their status appropriately.

Under this scheme,the next time the thread is scheduled to be

executed less auctions will need to be checked.

Additionally,upon the expiration of each auction the

conditions of the sale are checked and appropriate message are

sent to the seller.

The status field will also display ‘CLOSED’ to notify the

potential bidder that no bids will be allowed for that auction.

What is Agent

An agent is an entity that:

• Acts on behalf of others in an autonomous fashion.

Performs its actions in some level of proactivity and reactivity

Exhibits some levels of the key attributes of learning, co-operation, and mobility

Software agent

Software agents are software entities that carry out some set of operations on behalf of a user or another program with some degree of independence or autonomy, An agent is sometimes called a bot.eg. Infogate-which alerts us about news on specified topics of interest.

Function of s/w Agent

Software programs that continuously perform

three functions:

• They perceive dynamic conditions in the environment;

• They take action to affect conditions in the environment

• They use reasoning to interpret perceptions,

solve problems, draw inferences, and determine actions.

Properties of s/w agents

• Autonomous

• Pro-Active and/or Reactive

• Temporally continuous

• Goal Driven

Conti…

1. Autonomous-software agents can perform certain

tasks automatically according to the rules and inference mechanisms given by the designer-

Goal orientation: Accepts high-level requests indicating

what a human wants and is responsible for deciding how and where to satisfy the requests.

Collaboration: Does not blindly obey commands but can

modify requests, ask clarification questions, or even refuse to satisfy certain requests.

Flexibility: the agent is able to dynamically choose which

actions to invoke, and in what sequence, in response to the state of its external environment.

Conti…

2.Temoral Continuity-A software agent is a program to which a user assigns a goal or task.

3.Reactivity-A software agent responds in a timely fashion to changes in its environment

4.Goal Driven-An agent can accept high-level

requests specifying the goals of a human user (or

another agent) and decide how and where to satisfy

the requests.

Types of software agents

Agent tayagent tpe Descripti

1. Collaborative agents They are “able to act rationally and autonomously in

open and time-constrained multi-agent

environments”

2.Interface agents They support and assist the user when interacting

with one or more computer applications by learning

during the collaboration process with the user and

with other software agents

3.Mobile agents They are autonomous software programs capable of

roaming wide area networks (such as WWW) on

behalf of its user.

4. Information/internet

agents

They are designed to manage, manipulate or collate

the vast amount of

information available from many distributed sources

5. Reactive agents They act/respond to the current state of their

environment based on a stimulus response scheme

6. Hybrid agents They combine two or more agent philosophies into a

single agent in order to maximise the strengths and

minimise the deficiencies of the most relevant

techniques

7. Smart Agents They are equally characterised by autonomy,

cooperation, and learning

Agent type Description

Example of Software Agents

• Buying agents (shopping bots)

• User agents (personal agents)

• Monitoring and Surveillance agents (predictive agents)

• Data-mining agents

Application of s/w agents

1.Agents make less work for the end user and application developer2.The agent can adapt to its user preferences and habit over a course of time.3 It will intelligently get shared among the community.4. Mobile agents manage the user‟s E-mail, fax, phone and pager as well as linking the user to messaging and communica-tion services such as America Online.5. The most favorite area with respect to reactive agents is games and entertainment industry .6. merchandise, compare prices, place orders, etc.

Software Agents V/S Traditional Software Programs

Characteristict Regular Software Software Agents

Nature static dynamic

focus Perform tasks; a solution

engineered by a

developer who has

analyzed a problem.

Work toward a goal; about

what to accomplish rather

than how to go about it.

Flexibility Never changes, unless

changed by a human or

an error in the program

Adapts, learns.

Temporal continuity Runs one time , then

stops to be run again .

when called

Persistent: Continues to

run over time

Local interaction Network Table (NTBL):

Accesses data across

network using client-

server architecture.

Can travel and interact

with local entities, such as

databases, file servers,

and stationary agent,

through message passing.

Type Software program Software Agents

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