Now assume that the air force database contains the price air force plans to pay for a product, i.e. the price included in the budget. Like before, the GE database contain the list price, which will probably be higher than the air force budget price. This formalization is suited for use by some bargaining agents or programs. The bargaining agent for the air force will through negotiation attempt to convince the GE agent to lower the GE list price to the air force budget price (or some price that would be acceptable to the air force).
The bargaining agents will work in some
problem
solving context .
This context
contains constants denoting the various data bases which will be
relevant to the bargaining; in our case these will be
the General Electric context
,
and
the Air Force context c_AF
.
Context
contains functions which
represent the budget price and the list
price of a product.
Function
, when given a context of a
manufacturer and a product, returns the price
at which the product is offered for sale
by the manufacturer;
functions
, when given a context of a customer
and a product, returns the price
which the customer is willing to pay for the
product.
Like in the previous example,
can
represent the spares associated with an
engine.
Function
, when given a product and
an object, returns the spares which the given
context assumes necessary and thus included in
the price of the product.
The air force and GE will need to bargain in order to negotiate a price which is acceptable to both parties. However, since unlike GE, the air force assumes that the price will include a set of spare parts, the lifting axioms will be needed to adjust the prices in the two data bases to ensure that both the budget price and the list price pertain to the same package. The lifting axioms are:
The lifting axioms will enable us to derive
the and
prices in
, both of which pertain to the engine only, excluding any spares.
These can then be used by
the bargaining programs to negotiate a price
and administrate a sale.
Note again the difference between this
formalization and the previous one.
In the previous subsection the function in both data bases
referred to the price which was actually being paid for a product.
Therefore, the lifting axioms were used to directly infer the
price in one data base based on the price listed in another.
In this example, on the other hand, given the
list price the lifting axioms can not be used to work out the budget
price.
The lifting axioms simply ensure that both the list price and the
budget price talk only about the engine, and do not implicitly assume
the inclusion of spare parts.