An architecture of electronic market applying mobile agent technology

Mobile agents are an emerging technology that makes it very much easier to design, implement and maintain distributed systems. The electronic market is one important application of mobile agent technology. We propose an architecture of an electronic market where agents can support people participating in a market and take in people´s various needs, preferences and policies. The market consists of conductors and members. The conductor manages the market and members participate in electronic commerce activities. Members are providers, shops and consumers. The role of the conductor is to manage the setup of members, product ontology, member information, and in addition to that, the conductor also functions as a facilitator to the members and maintains member agents´ code and data. Thus, the conductor provides a framework of the market which makes it easier for members to execute electronic commerce activities. Consequently, mobile agents applied to the market enable people to participate without difficulties and it leads to active electronic commerce on the Internet