Modeling Collaboration Using Shared Objects

Abstract

Many object-oriented toolkits and frameworks for groupware development provide shared objects as a basic service. This relieves developers of a lot of problems originating from the field of distributed systems. However, there is little support on how to use shared objects to actually build collaborative applications. In this paper we propose an object-oriented model for applications using shared objects. The model is discussed with respect to object-oriented reusability aspects and its applicability is tested against CSCW-specific aspects like the provision of group-awareness and coupling control. Furthermore, concrete model examples derived from an example application are shown for illustration.