Real time groupware as a distributed system

This paper exposes the concurrency control problem in groupware when it is implemented as a distributed system. Traditional concurrency control methods cannot be applied directly to groupware because system interactions include people as well as computers. Methods, such as locking, serialization, and their degree of optimism, are shown to have quite different impacts on the interface and how operations are displayed and perceived by group members. The paper considers both human and technical considerations that designers should ponder before choosing a particular concurrency control method. It also reviews our work-in-progress designing and implementing a library of concurrency schemes in GROUPKIT, a groupware toolkit.

# Distributed systems and fault tolerance # Computer Science # Usability and User Interface Design # Software Engineering Techniques and Practices

Saul Greenberg, David Marwood (1994). "Real time groupware as a distributed system". ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). https://doi.org/10.1145/192844.193011