# A Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis Framework for Dispersed Group Decision-Making Contexts
## 5 Implementation and Demonstration  
The proposed framework was planned and designed to support group decision-making processes from two different perspectives. The first concerns the group's perspective, i.e., consists of a set of functionalities to support groups in attaining a solution, such as to propose an alternative(s) as a possible solution, to propose an alternative to reject, and to present relevant information. From this perspective, the group is the only entity that matters, and all recommendations, proposals, alerts, information, and knowledge provided intend to aid the group in reaching a decision. The second concerns each decision-maker's perspective, i.e., the set of functionalities that allows to provide personalized recommendations, alerts, information, and knowledge. From this perspective, each decision-maker is seen as a unique entity that must be supported throughout the decision process in the best possible way. Due to its versatility, the proposed framework can be used by group decision support systems for different purposes and/or as a resource to feed other software applications. A group decision support system is a complex software application that integrates a great variety of features and functionalities (usually implemented using different programming languages). In order to answer today's and future demands, scalability and performance are imperative. In [40], we presented a consensus-based group decision support system that was implemented using a Microservices Architecture Pattern. It comprises a Client App, an API Gateway and a set of microservices. Each microservice implements a different business and exposes a set of resources through a RESTful API. The DialogueGames4 DGDM microservice consists of a multi-agent system in which agents exchange arguments to anticipate the best solution according to the decision-makers' preferences [14; 41]. Each one of these agents represents a real decision-maker and works in favor of his/her interests. These agents have a short life period because they are solely created to perform the dialogue and they are terminated when the process ends. The MAS4 DGDM microservice consists of a multi-agent system with persistent agents. Each agent represents a real decision-maker and includes long-term data about the decision-maker they represent [15; 38]. In addition, these agents are considered \"Public Agents\" because they can be externally accessed through a URI (e.g., https://\(\langle\)T1\(\backslash\)textless\(|\))host:port\(\langle\)T1\(\backslash\)textgreater\(|\)/\(\backslash\)T1\(\backslash\)textless\(|\)]agent-unique-name\(\backslash\)T1\(\backslash\)textgreater\(|\)/T1\(\backslash\)textless\(|\)]resource-path\(\backslash\)T1\(\backslash\)textgreater\(|\)). That means, third party software applications can interact with these agents through a RESTful API (using the Multi-Agent Microservices approach) and consume their knowledge and capabilities directly as resources. These agents can communicate with each other and include several strategies to select appropriate information (in the different periods of the decision process) to present to the decision-maker they represent. The DGDM-Manager microservice satisfies the needs regarding the business model, such as POST new decision problems, POST new rounds, GET the list of existing decision problems, etc. In this work, we implemented a new microservice named MCDAFramework4 DGDM, developed using the ASP.NET Core framework, which includes the framework presented in Section 3 and integrated it in the consensus-bases group decision support system previously described. It is composed by dozens of endpoints (43) that allow to benefit from the framework's functionalities. Figure 1 presents the consensus-based group decision support system architecture with the MCDAFramework4 DGDM microservice.