Tender
Describes an offer of an entity collection or service,
or a need for such,
to be entered into the system for trading.
A tender belongs to a specific trader.
Whether a tender is an offer or a need is called its SORT.
A tender has a MATCH algorithm by which other tender
can be determined to match. A tender that matches a
given tender of the same sort is said to COMPETE
with that tender.
A matching tender of the opposite sort is said to FULFILL
that tender.
Post
A tender offered for bidding.
The posting defines a linear ordering of all bids
and criteria for minimally acceptable bids.
Bid
A bid for a posted tender.
A bid is associtated with a tender. A bid of a
tender must be for a post of a tender of the
opposite sort, that is a need for a offer,
or an offer for a need.
Service
A service that may be tendered.
A service is associated with a list of properties
and optionally with a schedule.
Schedule
A schedule associated with a service.
A schedule may comprise a list of specific date/times,
or may be periodic. A periodic schedule has a beginning,
and end, and a collection of date/times, each specified
by some consistent combination of minute, hour, day of week,
day of month (or before end of month), day of year, and/or year.
Wild cards, lists, and ranges (with skip intervals) are allowed.
Entity
A thing to be tendered.
An entity is associated with a list of properties.
Property
A property of of service or entity. A name/value pair.
Location
A location may be SIMPLE or COMPOUND.
A simple location is given as a
latitude/longitude,
postal address,
postal (or zip) code,
city,
or a transportaion facility,
such as an airport (eg. IATA code), or ocean port.
A compound location is
a collection of simple locations of one type,
a region defined as a simple polygon
whose vertices are simple locations
and whose edges are great circles or rhumbs,
a postal address with regular expressions,
or a range given as a distance from a simple location.
A SPECIFIC location is a complete address,
a transportation facility
(such as a port), or a lat/long pair.
Locations are partially ordered by the containment relation.
All simple locations should have at least
Trader
An individual or organzation that may participate in trading.
Community
A community is a collction of traders.
A community is established by a SPONSER,
who is responsible for regulating community membership.
Trades may be restricted to a given a community.
Exchange Process
The actual process associated making and exchange.
The process may be OPEN or BLIND.
In an open process, all bids are visable to all bidders.
In a blind process, bids are only visible to the poster,
and then only after bidding is closed.
Bids may be posted only on postings with tenders that MATCH
the tender being bid.
A need (offer) tender may only match an offer (need).
A posting is associated with opening and closing criteria.
Once a bid is opened, bids may be entered for the posting
until the closing criteria are met.
Upon closing, the bids are evaluated, and the system will
ACCEPT the best bid. The bidder is then notified.
Optionally, the bidder will have the opportunity to
CONFIRM or DENY the bid.
Once a bid is accepted and, optionally, confirmed, a contract is
entered into by the poster and the bidder. The system will then
REJECT all bidder for that posting, and nofify the bidders.
The performance of this contract may then be monitored by a system
such as the
event monitor.
If no suitable bid is found and accepted, the posting may then
be reopened, or closed.
If a bid is accepted but subsequently denied by the
bidder, the next best bid,
if any may be accepted and optionally confirmed.
The process of accepting and confirming bids
may be manual or automatic.
