Research Project: Modeling and design of virtual objects for distributed collaborative environments

Project description

A distributed collaborative environment enables multiple users, physically located at different places, to share and modify shared objects in real-time. Shared objects are distributed resources, with state that can change with time. The idea behind collaborative environments is to deliver a sense of ``being there interacting with you''.

Building a collaborative environment implies the challenge of providing consistency between the view of the users on the one hand and allowing the system to perform well and scale on the other. A central aim in our research in this project is a general model for such environments. The model should describe objects and users, interests and possibilities for interest management. Results include a first such integrated model based on an information-theoretic approach. Our work in this project also involves the feasibility and efficiency of our models and methods using test case studies. We are using collaborative editing, as one such case-study, which combines the challenges from the interactiveness, interest, consistency and communication points of view, with the prospect of considering later on applications with other properties, such as self-modifying objects, where we can study interface issues, as well.

In addition we investigate new methods for visualizing consistency and coping with consistency limitations, building on the group's research results on visualization.

The notion of a distributed object, that includes data, operations and a distributed strategy to distribute the data and coordinate the access to it, is central also to the implementation of various kinds of structures in distributed systems, e.g. routing information, shared workspace objects, middleware services. The project aims at fostering cross-fertilization between non-blocking synchronization and information dissemination towards deriving highly fault-tolerant, efficient structures for such objects. The project theme also relates with research challenges in visualization of distributed systems. (cf. also the group's related projects on multipeer information dissemination and consistency support synchronization and visualization.

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Publications

• N. Elmqvist, P. Eugster, A. Gidenstam, B. Koldehofe, M. Papatriantafilou, P. Tsigas ``An integrated model for collaborative distributed environments''. Unpublished manuscript, work in progress.
• P. Sorling ``Collaborative editing using CORBA with focus on consistency'' Masters thesis, department of Comp. Science, Chalmers Univ. of Technology and Gothenburg University, May 2003.

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