Patent ID: 7676419

Claim:
A storage medium storing a set of program instructions executable on a data processing device and usable to create agents and adapters for optimizing a bidding process for resources, the set of program instructions comprising: instructions for creating 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; instructions for creating 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 agent; and instructions for creating a plurality of resource adapters for providing a uniform interface to access application program interfaces of said resources, one of said resource adapters being a caching adapter for maintaining cached bids for predetermined contexts from predetermined ones of said bidder agents, and for receiving from said bid manager agent said call for bids and issuing said cached bids to said bid manager agent instead of requiring said predetermined bidder agents to issue said bids, and a no-caching adapter for receiving from said bid manager agent said call for bids, re-issuing said call for bids to ones of said bidder agents other than said predetermined bidder agents, receiving said bids from said ones of said bidder agents other than said predetermined bidder agents and sending said bids to said bid manager agent.