Argument exchange in heterogeneous electronic commerce environments

Argumentation enables agents to justify their actions and to reach stable situations faster, due to the amount of information that is exchanged. Logic and, in special, Extended Logic Programming (ELP) provides a way to develop arguments which are mathematically correct and close to a working prototype. Logic-based argumentation exhibits a set of unparalleled features such as: adequacy to logic-based approaches to pre-argument reasoning, similarity to the human reasoning processes, reasoning with incomplete information, and argument composition and extension, among many others.Electronic Commerce (EC) poses new challenges to argumentation due to the presence of heterogeneous environments. The ontological problems raised by such environments have been approached by the use of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) frameworks. Thus, solving the problem of argument exchange in heterogeneous environments should build on such frameworks. CommerceNet's eCo framework provides a 7-layer framework on which an argumentation service can be easily built.