Support for Distributed CSCW Applications

François J. N. Cosquer, Paulo Veríssimo, Sacha Krakowiak and Loïc Decloedt
Recent Advances In Distributed Systems, S. Krakowiak and S.K. Shrivastava (editors), Chapter 13, Part III- Applications Support, Springer-Verlag, LNCS vol. 1752, 2000.

Abstract

This chapter reports on the advances made in the field of distributed systems technology for the computational support of CSCW applications. We provide insight into CSCW application development and runtime support with emphasis on distributed synchronized applications (i.e. same time, different place). We discuss our experience through the presentation of concrete examples. After an introductory survey which gives the reader an overview of existing CSCW applications and tools, we present the overall software system architecture, concerned with the software layers involved in the support for CSCW applications in today's distributed systems. Two CSCW support platforms are described including both architecture and implementation considerations. The presentation is followed by a section on real-life CSCW applications scenarios based on such dedicated support platforms.