A Hierarchical Approach to Service Negotiation

Service negotiation allows a service client to negotiate with a service provider on the terms of service. Much existing work on service negotiation assumes that a provider will define its negotiation strategy in terms of the state of its resources. This approach can lead to complex strategy and assumes, unrealistically, that providers have full knowledge and control of their resources. We propose a hierarchical model of service negotiation in which negotiation strategy is defined in terms of sub-negotiations with internal or external agents. This model helps to manage the complexity of negotiation strategy by allowing it to be decomposed, with each component having well-defined scope. In this paper we present our hierarchical negotiation model, and a negotiation protocol and negotiation policy language based on it.