Collaboration Technology Laboratory (CTL)
GOAL
The goal of this research is to design and develop a Computer Supported Collaborative Writing (CSCWriting) environment. Prior research on Computer Supported Collaborative Work 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 research. The most important contribution of this work is the proposal of an Activity IDentification tag (AID) 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, version maintenance and visualization, 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 tree of the evolving document that incorporates AID tag information, any user can easily understand the historical evolution and current context of the document.
STATUS
Project Completed, June 1998
FACULTY INVOLVED
Kai H. Chang and Hari Narayanana
CURRENT STUDENT INVOLVED
Byong G. Lee (Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, Seoul Women’s University, South Korea)
PUBLICATIONS
1. Byong G. Lee, Hari Narayanan, and Kai H. Chang, “An Integrated Approach to Distributed Version Management and Role-based Access Control in Computer Supported Collaborative Writing,” The Journal of Systems and Software, Vol. 59, No. 2, pp. 119-134, Nov. 2001.
2. B. Lee, K. Chang, and H. Narayanan, “An Integrated Approach to Version Control Management in Computer Supported Collaborative Writing,” Proceedings of the 36th ACM Southeast Conference, Atlanta, GA, April, 1998, pp. 34-43.
107 Dunstan Hall, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849
Copyright © 2002, Prof.Kai H. Chang, Last Modified: 02/21/2002