Electronic commerce with secure intelligent trade agents

Electronic commerce on the Internet has the potential to generate billions of transactions, but the number of merchants providing goods or services on the Internet will be so large that it will become impossible for humans to visit each site and decide where it is best to buy or sell goods. In this paper we develop intelligent trade agents that are able to roam a network, collect and analyze data from servers on the network and make decisions to buy and sell goods on behalf of a user. The combination of distributed-object technology and single and public key encryption mechanisms make these agents secure intelligent trade agents. We show that distributed-object technology is an enabling technology for intelligent trade agents.