EC Brokerage Facility

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EC Brokerage Facility

• Presentation to the ECDTF Brokerage Working
  Group, BurlingameNovember 1998,
  ec/98-11-08Stephen McConnell, OSM -
  mcconnell_at_osm.net

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BACKGROUNDECDTF Brokerage Facility
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BACKGROUNDEcommerce Context

• Electronic commerce is the ability to perform
  exchanges of goods, services, content, assets and
  money, between two or more participants (users,
  organizations) using electronic tools and
  techniques.
• Whatever the roles a participant plays in an
  electronic market (consumer, customer, merchant,
  provider) they have to deal with information and
  play the roles of information providers and
  information consumers.
• Information consumers need to search, gather,
  filter information information providers need to
  deliver and route information.

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BACKGROUNDBrokerage Purpose

• The main purpose of the brokerage facility is to
  allow users (information consumers and providers)
  to be more focused in dealing with information
  about commercial services in the global
  electronic market. A Brokerage Facility allows
  information consumers to focus requests for
  information towards the pertinent sources of
  information.

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BACKGROUNDIdentity, Anonymity and Privacy

• Information about participants involves the
  concept of identity, and of publicity of
  identity. Confidentiality of information can
  concern the anonymity of the transaction and the
  privacy of the transaction towards the rest of
  the market.
• Usually, customers and consumers prefer anonymity
  and privacy of their consuming acts and habits.
  Inversely, merchants and provider take advantage
  to be largely known, attempting to gather
  information on consumers and consuming practices
  and employ advertising methods and techniques to
  gain attention, build awareness, change attitude
  and motivate action by the consumer.

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BACKGROUNDDiscovery and Advertising

• A Brokerage Facility introduced two specific
  interface requirements, namely recruiting and
  forwarding. These two interfaces correspond to
  the respective concepts of discovery and
  advertising.

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BACKGROUNDDefinitions

• Ability - an ability is defined in terms of the
  commercial services by a provider.
• you can recruit an ability provider,
• or an ability exposed through a contract
• Interest - an interest is expressed in the form
  of a specification (XML or TDO) that may describe
  a type of service or contract.
• you can express interest in an ability provider
• or an interest in an ability exposed under a
  contract

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BACKGROUNDRequirements

• 1. interfaces through which a consumer can
  express an interest in something
• 2. mechanisms through which a providers to
  express an ability to perform or do something
• 3. mechanisms through which brokerage policy can
  be established (indicating such things as
  identity propagation constraints, maximum number
  of responses and so forth).
• 4. mechanisms supporting recruiting capabilities

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BACKGROUNDRequirements (cont.)

• 5. recruiting interface is required to supports
  matching between declared consumer interest
  against a declared provider ability.
• a consumer can provide a specification of desired
  ability (demand) to a broker for the purpose of
  the matching and of the demand with abilities
  know to the broker, and the return of one or a
  collection of matches to the consumer
• a provider can specify abilities to a broker for
  the purpose of the matching of the supplied
  ability specification with expressions of ability
  interest known by the broker, and the return of
  one or a collection of matches to the provider

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BACKGROUNDRequirements (cont.)

• 6. mechanisms supporting forwarding capabilities
• a providers can supply a description of abilities
  to broker for the purpose of the forwarding of
  the ability to registered consumers who have
  expressed an interest in the particular ability
• a consumers can supply a specification of
  interest in an ability or abilities to the broker
  - broker forwards expression of interest to
  providers who have expressed an interest in
  responding to the ability specification
• a recipient is not obliged to respond to a
  specification received.

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BACKGROUNDRequirements (cont.)

• 7. Subscription mechanisms support maintenance of
  dynamic brokered catalogues through the following
  ways
• a broker may subscribe to a catalogue of
  abilities maintained by a provider (enabling the
  brokers maintenance of a dynamic repository of
  ability information)
• a broker may subscribe to a catalogue of consumer
  interest (enabling the broker to maintain a
  dynamic repository of ability demand)
• a consumer may subscribe to brokered recruiting
  registry in which changes in a marketplace are
  reflected in a dynamically maintained register of
  external abilities
• a provider may subscribe to a brokered recruiting
  registry in which changes in the marketplace are
  reflected in a dynamically maintained register of
  ability consumers