Byong G. Lee

An integrated approach to version control management in computer supported collaborative writing

Computer Supported Collaborative Writing (CSCWriting) is an interactive application that allows multiple distributed users to collaborate on a shared document. To support the interaction among users, many CSCWriting tools facilitate synchronous communication. However, synchronous communication alone cannot be employed successfully due to slow network environment and various collaborative writing modes. These problems demand a new approach that aims at a simple, low-cost asynchronous collaboration environment supported by a version control system. However, since current version control techniques have been developed for single user environments, these can not be directly incorporated into CSCWriting environments. That is, these do not have the ability to address social/cognitive aspects, such as group awareness and access control. This paper describes issues regarding various physical and social artifacts required for version control in a CSCWriting environment, effective mechanisms for managing such artifacts, and an integrated approach to combining the artifacts.

On computer supported collaborative writing tools for distributed environments

Traditional computerized writing tools designed for single user access often create barriers to group collaboration. Usually, participants have to work in an interleaved fashion to prevent inconsistency. Oral communication is normally used for coordinating group activities. With the recent development of computer networks and widespread deployment of networked workstations, automating the group writing process for geographically distributed users has become feasible. This paper introduces a Distributed Collaborative Writing Aid (DCWA) developed for networked workstations. The DCWA can help users cooperate on a writing task (such as programming, report writing, note taking, etc.) logically, conveniently , and efficiently. Among many important open problems, the paper addresses issues related to the four major components in the DCWA. These are group organization, multicasting within groups, distributed database, and user interface.

An integrated approach to distributed version management and role-based access control in computer supported collaborative writing

Abstract Tools to support computer supported collaborative writing (CSCWriting) allow multiple distributed users to collaborate over a wide area network on constructing a shared document. Prior research on computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) in general has predominantly focused on synchronous collaboration. Network latency becomes a bottleneck in maintaining shared artifacts during synchronous collaboration. Besides, to enable truly cooperative work asynchronous modes need to be supported as well, so that mobile users can switch between synchronous and asynchronous modes while they disconnect and reconnect to the network. These two considerations motivated the development of a distributed version control system for CSCWriting described in this paper. The most important contribution of our work is the proposal of an activity identification (AID) tag as the fundamental mechanism to support distributed management of multiple versions of a document. The AID tag facilitates the design and implementation of an integrated approach that includes differencing, merging and role-based access control at different levels of granularity, maintaining and visualizing the version structure, and group awareness of document status and operations. The AID tag leads to simple and effective differencing and merging schemes. Its unique address scheme eliminates the need for large storage capacity for version maintenance. Role-based access control can be implemented by associating the access right table and role assignment capabilities with the AID tag. Information for providing group awareness of the changing document is available from the AID tag. In addition, since the system maintains a user-browsable version structure of the evolving document that incorporates AID tag information, any user collaborating in the authoring of a document can easily visualize the historical evolution and current context of the document.

Software development and integration in a computer supported cooperative work environment

This paper presents a prototype computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) environment that supports the engineering design process. In particular, this environment provides collaborative tools that support computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided software engineering (CASE). This paper takes an high level look at the system as a whole and then focuses on the method used to implement the CASE support. It addresses how group members can simultaneously work on coding a program and then integrate their work to form a single program inside this environment.

Design and model for a computer supported cooperative environment for CASE and CAD applications

For the past decade, numerous commercial and experimental systems have been designed for collaborative writing applications. From our experience working in the area of CSCW research and development, we have come to realize the possibility and the potential significance of CSCW systems in the engineering design process. The objective of the research is to introduce and develop a CSCW environment to support engineering design, specifically, in a distributed environment that combines computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided software engineering (CASE). In an effort to combine them into a seamless engineering package, we first target supporting engineering design (using CAD) with computer simulation (using CASE). This paper addresses issues involved in the design and development of the environment, including the graphical user interface, text and graphics editors, video and audio communication, multimedia database, document integration, and software simulation.

Dynamic Workload Balancing for Collaboration Strategy in Hybrid P2P System

The peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have grown significantly over the last few years due to their high potential of sharing various resources. Analyzing the workload of P2P system, however, is very challenging as it involves with the cooperation of many peers. Researches have shown that P2P systems become very effective when dividing the peers into two layers, SP (Super-Peer) and OP (Ordinary-Peer). In this configuration, SP based P2P systems have to deal with a large volume of queries from OPs. Therefore, it is important for SPs to keep their workload stable to provide quality service to the OPs. In this study, we present a collaboration strategy for workload balancing based on SPs workload characteristics and status. Through the SPs load balancing mechanism, the message response time is decreased and the workload of P2P system becomes more stable.

Computer-aided software engineering in a computer supported cooperative environment

Most of todays applications have been targeted at making individuals more productive. It is common, however, for several individuals to collaborate on a project. Computers support the individual work done by group members but provide only token support for group interaction. There is a need for new tools that provide an environment where a group can cooperate on a project. Most work done in this area has thus far been targeted toward office automation and communication. However, there has been very little done to provide a group tool that supports the engineering design process. The objective of the CSCW project is to provide an environment that supports this process. In particular, this environment provides collaborative tools that support CAD and CASE. A CSCW environment has been developed by a team of faculty and students at Auburn University. This system is an expansion of an earlier project that focused on collaborative writing, called Distributed Collaborative Writing Aid. The CSCW project has added support for CAD and CASE. This paper discusses the method used to implement the CASE support. In particular, it addresses how group members can simultaneously work on coding a program and then integrate their work.

Supporting document organization and security in distributed collaborative authoring systems through the use of collaborations

Most traditional collaborative authoring tools offer some degree of document security and concurrency control. Document security is usually accomplished by allowing users to maintain private windows and to assign private ownership to files, perhaps through operating system mechanisms. Shared portions of a document can be manipulated through shared windows. Some form of concurrency control, such as a locking mechanism, is usually used to provide editors of a shared document with a consistent view of the document. However, few implementations focus on providing security for a document produced by a limited group of collaborators. Instead, these systems provide access to either the owner, or everyone. This paper discusses an organizational paradigm known the Collaboration. Collaborations facilitate group organization, document security, and concurrency control, not through major changes in the operating system or through the introduction of new network protocols, but instead, through features already present in the UNIX operating system and existing network protocols. This paper will also briefly discuss how the Distributed Collaborative Writing Aid (DCWA), a prototype groupware suite, uses the Collaboration paradigm to accomplish these goals.

Hypertext document generator in a computer supported cooperative work environment

Distributed Collaborative Writing Aid (DCWA) is an environment developed for a group of designers to work together. It provides real-time communication that enables collaboration members to share ideas while working together. The emphasis of this paper is on the process of integrating and generating documents. This process involves creating, editing, and revising a document tree structure and integrating textual, graphic, and image components into a complete document. HTML is chosen as the format for the integrated documents generated by DCWA. With this capability, collaboration members can tailor the collaboration document to meet their individual needs.

Efficient content distribution method based on location and similarity in unstructured P2P system

The peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have grown significantly over the last few years due to their high potential of sharing various resources. However, identifying the location and content similarity between peers is very costly and time-consuming as it involves the cooperation of many peers. In this study, we propose an ISP2P (Intelligent Super-Peer based P2P) system, which classifies the peers into three types, ASP (Agent Super-Peer), SP (Super-Peer) and OP (Ordinary-Peer), and utilizes the location information and content types to provide efficient content distribution and retrieval service. The proposed system can improve the performance of average message response time and reduce the message traffic by using the similarity of the network distance and contents.