Architecture for synchronous groupware application development

1994

Abstract: The central question studied in this thesis is how to design high-level reusable components for developing synchronous groupware applications. A modern user interface requires the separation of applications into two components namely application and graphical user interface. An effective architecture for synchronous, multiple-user groupware applications requires a separation of one more component from the application: the management of the session and shared data.

Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGOPS European workshop on Support for composing distributed applications - EW 8, 1998

The term "groupware" is used to describe a wide range of application types, from e-mail systems through shared text editors to videoconferencing systems, all of which aim to support the co-operation of multiple users . Building such systems is difficult. All but the most trivial groupware system are complex distributed multi-user systems. For example, a system might integrate a spreadsheet, a CAD package and a multi-media conferencing application, enforcing a variation of strict turn taking on the part of the participants . It is important therefore to find a way to support the construction of groupware, so simplifying the design and programming tasks. This support should be generic and comprehensive: it should support, in every important respect, the construction of a very broad spectrum of groupware systems, rather than some subset. We hypothesise that useful groupware support should be based on an integrated approach that focuses first on the commonality across the range of groupware systems, rather than targeting specific support issues for one or other class of system.

CLEI Electronic Journal, 2018

A major challenge in building groupware systems is to provide support for control and coordina- tion of users actions on shared resources. This support includes the maintenance of the current state of the collaborative multi-user environment such as control of group interaction rules and coordination of users actions or tasks. We propose an extension of the visual presentation/underlying data model currently followed when developing interactive single user applications. We claim that groupware systems require two additional components: user-related data and group interaction rules. The former component maintains information about active users, their roles, and privileges. While the latter keeps the state of the current collaborative environment to control and coordinate user actions. Furthermore, our approach allows developers build each system component separately, promoting the decom- position of the application’s computational objects and its collaborative environment specifica- ...

2003

This paper compares popular client and server architectures used for groupware. It presents a client framework and evaluates native, installed clients, Java-based applications, and web-based architectures. It also presents a server framework and evaluates databases, thin servers, application servers, and a custom collaborative server. Lessons learned are provided for each architecture.

2004

Groupware aimed at coordinating the actions of people is faced with a dilemma. In order to support a group at work, the groupware must be configured into applications that accurately reflect how the group works. Yet, organizations are constantly changing both their structure and the way they work, leaving the groupware application inaccurate, or at least out of date. Implementers of groupware applications are finding that the cost of implementation comes not from the hardware or the software, but the effort needed to capture and codify their organizational processes, and then to maintain the applications to keep them up to date. This paper explores how the implementation of groupware is a collaborative activity. Methods to define processes, such as BPR, are group activities. A powerful way to solve this is to develop the groupware applications collaboratively. In a sense, this is groupware to help in the development of groupware. Four key capabilities are described that are needed t...

A co-ordination language technology, called Wilde, is presented which supports the construction of component-based systems open to dynamic redesign. Wilde provides a co-ordination language that supports the design of software as compositions of reusable, generic, simple design patterns. Wilde provides a means whereby designs can be transformed, or modified, in a safe and tractable fashion. A distinguishing feature of Wilde is that it allows for post-compilation modification of components and their interactions.

1999

ABSTRACT Groupware toolkits let developers build applications for synchronous and distributed computer-based conferencing. This chapter describes four components that we believe toolkits must provide. A run-time architecture automatically manages the creation, interconnection, and communications of both centralized and distributed processes that comprise conference sessions.

International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 2006

It is common that, in a long-term asynchronous collaborative activity, groups of users engage in occasional synchronous sessions. In this paper, we analyze the data management requirements for supporting this common work practice in typical collaborative activities and applications. We call the applications that support such work practice multi-synchronous applications. This analysis shows that, as users interact in different ways in each setting, some applications have different requirements and need to rely on different data sharing techniques in synchronous and asynchronous settings. We present a data management system that allows to integrate a synchronous session in the context of a long-term asynchronous interaction, using the suitable data sharing techniques in each setting and an automatic mechanism to convert the long sequence of small updates produced in a synchronous session into a large asynchronous contribution. We exemplify the use of our approach with two multi-synchr...

2003

We present a new architectural style for synchronous groupware that eases the transition from scenario based modeling to component design, and from component design to distributed implementation. The style allows developers to work at a distribution-independent conceptual level and provides for automatic or semi-automatic refinement of conceptual designs into appropriate distributed implementations at run-time. Both the conceptual and implementation levels of the system can be evolved dynamically at run-time in response to user needs and changes in the distributed system environment. System evolution at both levels is specified via an evolution calculus.

There has been a recent explosion of interest in groupware and computersupported cooperative work, both in research and in commercial systems. This is evidenced by the large number of workshops and conferences and has been recognised in the UK by the DTI/EPSRC CSCW programme. This tutorial aims to give the attendee an introduction to the process and problems of building groupware systems. The implementation parts will consider issues for both synchronous and asynchronous groupware and example of prototypes will be discussed.