Customize Online Auction Software

Online auction technologies are revolutionizing the way we conduct business online. However, the proliferation of auction related research and the development of new auction security techniques are often limited by the uncooperative behaviour of the major online auctioneers. Due to the limited availability of quality auction data and literature on online auction software design, we have created our own online auction server to facilitate auction research. This paper describes our experiences with designing online auction software. We present a basic online model upon which more sophisticated auction scenarios can be crafted. We address website design, preliminary security, the database schema, transaction and timing issues, and also show how software bidding agents can interact with the model. Our model is grounded in object oriented techniques and is open source so that other researchers can expand upon our approach.