Supporting contract match-making

Abstract

This paper describes a preliminary investigation of contracts with a view towards automating the process of contract match-making. A novel approach based on exploiting Standard Form Contracts is described. The approach is shown to be implementable with current technology and a discussion of the CORBA/ODP trading service extensions necessary for implementing the proposed contract match-making is provided. A second approach based on Standard Contract Clauses which overcomes some of the limitations of Standard Form Contracts, is briefly outlined. The flexibility offered by this approach however, is accompanied by a considerable increase in the complexity of contract match-making. Both Standard Form Contracts and Standard Contract Clauses based match-making point towards an exciting area of future research.