Distribution issues in the design and implementation of a virtual market place

This paper describes an investigation into the distribution issues surround ing the design and implementation of virtual market places (ViMPs). The pap er starts by describing the requirements customers and service providers ha ve from a ViMP. It is then shown how the requirements deemed most important can be addressed by exploiting the inherent distribution of certain aspect s, and by distributing other aspects of such market places. In particular, the paper concentrates on the structuring of the information space describi ng the services and products, and its distribution between the providers an d the market place mediator. Primarily, this supports the implementation of phased dialogues between the customer and the providers, while at the same time addressing the providers' desire to protect business sensitive proces ses and information. Distributing the dialogue in time allows customers and providers to interact more flexibly and to gradually build understanding a nd trust between them, before divulging any business or personally sensitiv e information to each other. The distributed approach supports a scalable m arket place and also points towards a way of addressing providers' legacy p roblems. It is also shown how the apparent contradiction of a distributed m arket place and the need to monitor and control it for regulation purposes can be addressed, without compromising the ability of the system to scale. Finally, the design and implementation of a virtual insurance market place using Java on a CORBA compliant platform are presented. (C) 2000 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved.