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US 2001/0018678 A1Published application
Caching mechanism to optimize a bidding process used to select resources and services
AssigneeMitel Corporation
InventorsMichael Weiss, Babak Esfandiari
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A caching mechanism is provided for use by a Bid Manager in a multi-agent resource allocation bidding system. The caching mechanism stores the most recent bids issued by one or more Bidders for a given bidding context. The cache is updated using a notification mechanism.
Claims16
A multi-agent caching system for optimizing a bidding process for resources, comprising:
- a Bid Manager agent for issuing a call for bids for usage of said resources, receiving said bids and selecting a best bid from among said bids, wherein each of said bids defines a predetermined context;
- a plurality of Bidder agents for issuing said bids according to predetermined bidding policies in response to said call for bids, wherein one of said Bidder agents issues said best bid and provides said resources upon selection of said best bid by said Bid Manager;
- and
- a plurality of ResourceAdapters for providing a uniform interface to access APIs of said resources, one of said ResourceAdapters being a CachingAdapter for maintaining cached bids for predetermined contexts from predetermined ones of said Bidders, receiving from said Bid Manager said call for bids and issuing said cached bids to said Bid Manager instead of requiring said predetermined Bidders to issue said bids, and a NoCachingAdapter for receiving from said Bid Manager said call for bids, re-issuing said call for bids to ones of said Bidders other than said predetermined Bidders, receiving said bids from said ones of said Bidders other than said predetermined Bidders and sending said bids to said Bid Manager.
1 more element
An optimized method of acquiring bids from a plurality of Bidders for resources, comprising the steps of:
- issuing a request for bids for usage of said resources, wherein each of said bids defines a predetermined context;
- accessing a cache of stored bids and related contexts to determine whether said cache contains bids defining said predetermined context;
- issuing a call for bids to said Bidders in connection with which no bids defining said predetermined context are stored in said cache, in response to which said Bidders return bids to said Bid Manager and said bids are stored in said cache along with said predetermined context;
- and
- retrieving from said cache said bids defining said predetermined context previously stored by said Bidders.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.