Meeting in the agora: a description logic approach to peer-to-peer e-commerce

We propose a logical approach to supply-demand matching in peer-to-peer e-commerce, where demand and supply are both described as concepts to be matched, either completely -full match- or partially -partial match- as it allows for an open-world assumption. Incomplete information can be dealt with, and absence of information can be distinguished from negative information, allowing one to discard offers/requests without the necessary properties, and to ask for missing information in the potential matches. The logical approach has been deployed in a prototype system implemented for a particular ontology but easily generalizable. Limits and possibilities of the proposed approach are analyzed and discussed.