A rule management framework for negotiating mobile agents

Proposes an application framework for mobile agents which provides rule-based generic services to support the three phases of a market transaction (information phase, contracting phase and settlement phase). It is described within the four views of an electronic market (the business view, the transaction view, the services view and the infrastructure view) which describe organizational as well as technological aspects. The focus of this paper is on the technological aspects of the contracting phase in which the participating agents carry out an automated negotiation process to determine the terms of contract