crab—combinatorial auction body software systemcrab-combinatorial拍卖软件系统.pdfVIP

J. Software Engineering Applications, 2010, 3, 718-722 doi:10.4236/jsea.2010.37082 Published Online July 2010 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jsea) CRAB—CombinatoRial Auction Body Software System 1 1 2 Petr Fiala , Jana Kalčevová , Jan Vraný 1Department of Econometrics, Faculty of Informatics and Statistics, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic; 2Software Engineering Group, Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic. Email: pfiala@vse.cz, kalcevov@vse.cz, jan.vrany@fit.cvut.cz Received February 4th, 2010; revised June 17th, 2010; accepted June 19th, 2010. ABSTRACT Auctions are important market mechanisms for the allocation of goods and services. Combinatorial auctions are those auctions in which buyers can place bids on combinations of items. Combinatorial auctions have many applications. The paper presents the CRAB software system. CRAB is a non- commercial software system for generating, solving, and testing of combinatorial auction problems. The system solves problems by Balas’ method or by the primal-dual algo- rithm. CRAB is implemented in Ruby and it is distributed as the file crab.rb. The system is freely available on web pag- es for all interested users. Keywords : Combinatorial Auction, Complexity, Software System, Generating, Solving, Testing 1. Introduction CRAB system, especially about the implemented models and methods, by the user. The system is available on web Auctions are important market mechanisms for the allo- pages for all interested users. cation of goods and services. Auction theory has caught tremendous interest from both the economic side as well 2. Combinatorial Auctions as the Internet industry. Design of aucti