Multi-Dimensional Matchmaking for Electronic Markets

Matchmaking is the process of mediating demand and supply in markets based on profile information. In electronic marketplaces and in negotiations, matchmaking plays a key role. The issue is to find the most appropriate agent for a task, the best bid in a multi-attribute auction, or the best present good for a request. In most real-world markets, multi-dimensional matchmaking is required, i.e., the ability to combine different dimensions and sub-dimensions of decision making to define an overall relevance. This task requires the interplay of multiple matchmaking algorithms. Another central aspect is the possibility to design relevance computation processes for multi-attribute objects easily. The realization of this issue makes multi-dimensional matchmaking processes to be easily integrated into industrial marketplace solutions. The work described in this paper aims on general multi-dimensional matchmaking objectives. These matchmaking objectives are implemented and deployed for industrial applications. The main contributions of this paper are: (i) the definition of multi-dimensional matchmaking in general; (ii) an implementation of configurable multi-dimensional matchmaking as a application dependent EJB TM component, which is configurable using XML; (iii) the definition and implementation of different relevance (i.e., distance) functions for general usage and specific domains; (iv) the description of a process guiding application developers to design matchmaking applications (enterprise java beans); and (v) a report on experiences deploying the EJB matchmaker for the human resource area within a large-scale agent-based software.