Abstract
In today’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) era, the need for real-time collaboration over the Internet is increasing. Due to ongoing corporate globalization and geographic dispersion of project operations, collaborative becomes a key for supporting these distributed corporate operations. Current Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools typically do not support collaborative work. In geographically dispersed environment, designers from different companies or locations are having difficulties to communicate with each other. Several studies have been done on collaborative environment. However, all studies are still in the research level and not yet commercialize. In order to support collaborative work, few concerns must be taken into the consideration. Network architecture is the main concern when designing a network based collaborative environment. Client-Server Architecture and Peer-to-Peer Architecture were two possible architecture designs that can be used for collaborative graphical based design environment.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Computer-Aided Design (CAD): Computer-aided design is a system with the combination of hardware and software that enables designer to design their works.
Computer-Assisted Software (CASE): Computer- assisted software engineering is a category of software used to provides a development environment for programmers.
Web-Based Electronic Design (WELD): Webbased electronic design is a system used to provide a reliable, scalable connection and communication mechanisms for a distributed environment that consist of users, EDA tools, and services.
Client-Server Collaborative Environment (CSCE): An environment that serves as the virtual workspace for collaborators. It was implemented using client server architecture.
NAPSTER: An application that gives individual access to media files such as MP3 by creating a file sharing system over the Internet.
Electronic Design Automation (EDA): Electronic design automation is a software used to design electronic circuit. It is an automation tool that can simplify the design work as well as speed up the required time for a design.
IVE: Internet-based distributed VHDL design is a tool used to help developers to distribute VHDL related design data, software components, and services over the networks.
Client-server: One or more machines (client) accessing a powerful computer (server) to store and process data.
Integrated Circuit (IC): A small electronic device made up by semiconductor materials.