Abstract: A method and apparatus for generating bids for bidding agents in an auction. Bids are sorted by decreasing bid amount for regular bids and upper limit for order bids to form a sorted set of bids, wherein each bid includes a quantity and wherein the bids include order bids. A first bid is identified requesting a quantity in which an unallocatable portion is present. A number of order bids is selected from the bids, wherein the number of order bids are higher in the sorted set of bids than the first bid and have an allocation requirement less than the unallocatable portion of the of the first bid. A price is set for the order bids higher than the first bid and not in the aforementioned selected bids.

Abstract: A method for allowing flexible creation and alteration of business processes within a commerce system includes using state machines to describe the actions that can be taken by particular roles at particular points in a process. The state machines are used by a commerce system to enforce validity of user actions, to track the execution of actions within an instance of the business process, to provide the user interface with a list of actions available to a user working on an instance of the business process, to provide coordination between state machines, and to allow different organizations to have varied business processes.