Personal Peer-to-Peer Collaboration Based on Shared Objects

Abstract

This chapter describes the design and system architecture of a new peer-to-peer technology for personal collaboration based on the notion of shared objects. This approach allows users to collaborate in a rich but lightweight manner by organizing different types of shared artifacts into semistructured activities with dynamic membership, hierarchical object-relationships, and synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. This approach goes beyond simple peer-to-peer file sharing. It requires data replication and sophisticated consistency control to keep data consistent in a blended synchronous and asynchronous environment. The authors present the design of a prototype system and then develop an enhanced consistency control algorithm that is tailored to the needs of this new environment. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of this approach. This chapter aims at informing researchers about both the potential and the complexity of more advanced peer-to-peer applications and shows the trade-offs in the design and implementation of these systems.