Skip to main content

Forby: Providing Groupware Features Relying on Distributed File System Event Dissemination

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 5784))

Abstract

Intensive research and development has been conducted in the design and creation of groupware systems for distributed users. While for some activities, these groupware tools are widely used, for other activities the impact in the groupware community has been smaller and can be improved. One reason for this fact is that the mostly common used applications do not support collaborative features and users are reluctant to change to a different application. In this paper we discuss how available file system mechanisms can help to address this problem. In this context, we present Forby, a system that allows to provide groupware features to distributed users by combining filesystem monitoring and distributed event dissemination. To demonstrate our solution, we present three systems that rely on Forby for providing groupware features to users running unmodified applications.

This work was partially supported by FCT/MCES (POSC/FEDER #59064/2004 and PTDC/EIA/59064/2006).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Avrahami, D., Hudson, S.E.: Qna: augmenting an instant messaging client to balance user responsiveness and performance. In: CSCW 2004: Proc. of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pp. 515–518. ACM, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Begole, J., Rosson, M.B., Shaffer, C.A.: Flexible collaboration transparency: supporting worker independence in replicated application-sharing systems. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 6(2), 95–132 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Dewan, P., Hegde, R.: Semi-synchronous conflict detection and resolution in asynchronous software development. In: Proc. of the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work - ECSCW 2007, pp. 159–178 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Dourish, P., Keith Edwards, W., LaMarca, A., Lamping, J., Petersen, K., Salisbury, M., Terry, D.B., Thornton, J.: Extending document management systems with user-specific active properties. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 18(2), 140–170 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Fitzpatrick, G., Marshall, P., Phillips, A.: CVS integration with notification and chat: lightweight software team collaboration. In: Proc. of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pp. 49–58 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Gross, T., Prinz, W.: Awareness in context: a light-weight approach. In: ECSCW 2003: Proc. of the eighth conference on European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Norwell, MA, USA, pp. 295–314. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Hupfer, S., Cheng, L.-T., Ross, S., Patterson, J.: Introducing collaboration into an application development environment. In: CSCW 2004: Proc. of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pp. 21–24 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Ignat, C.-L., Oster, G.: Awareness of Concurrent Changes in Distributed Software Development. In: Proc. of the International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS 2008), Monterrey, Mexico, November 2008, pp. 456–464 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Ignat, C.-L., Papadopoulou, S., Oster, G., Norrie, M.C.: Providing Awareness in Multi-synchronous Collaboration Without Compromising Privacy. In: Proc. of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW 2008, San Diego, California, USA, November 2008, pp. 659–668 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  10. JNotify. Jnotify linux api (2007), http://jnotify.sourceforge.net/

  11. Li, D., Li, R.: Transparent sharing and interoperation of heterogeneous single-user applications. In: CSCW 2002: Proc. of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, New York, NY, USA, pp. 246–255 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Li, D., Lu, J.: A lightweight approach to transparent sharing of familiar single-user editors. In: CSCW 2006: Proc. of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, New York, NY, USA, pp. 139–148 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Machado, D., Preguiça, N., Baquero, C.: Vc2 - providing awareness in off-the-shelf versioncontrol systems. In: IWCES9: Proc. of the Nineth International Workshop on Collaborative Editing Systems. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Molli, P., Skaf-Molli, H., Bouthier, C.: State treemap: an awareness widget for multi-synchronous groupware. In: 7th International Workshop on Groupware - CRIWG 2001, Darmstadt, Germany (September 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Rowstron, A.I.T., Druschel, P.: Pastry: Scalable, decentralized object location, and routing for large-scale peer-to-peer systems. In: Middleware 2001: Proc. of the IFIP/ACM International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms Heidelberg, London, UK, pp. 329–350. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Sarma, A., Noroozi, Z., van der Hoek, A.: Palantír: raising awareness among configuration management workspaces. In: ICSE 2003: Proc. of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 444–454. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. De Souza, C.R.B., Basaveswara, S.D., Redmiles, D.F.: Supporting global software development with event notification servers. In: Proc. of the ICSE 2002 International Workshop on Global Software Development (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Sun, C., Xia, S., Sun, D., Chen, D., Shen, H., Cai, W.: Transparent adaptation of single-user applications for multi-user real-time collaboration. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 13(4), 531–582 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Zadok, E., Nieh, J.: FiST: A language for stackable file systems. In: Proc. of the Annual USENIX Technical Conference, San Diego, CA, June 2000, pp. 55–70. USENIX Association (2000)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Sousa, P., Preguiça, N., Baquero, C. (2009). Forby: Providing Groupware Features Relying on Distributed File System Event Dissemination. In: Carriço, L., Baloian, N., Fonseca, B. (eds) Groupware: Design, Implementation, and Use. CRIWG 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5784. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04216-4_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04216-4_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04215-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04216-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics