An integrating, transformation-oriented approach to concurrency control and undo in group editors

Concurrency control and group undo are important issues in the design of groupware, especially for interactive group editors. We present an improved version of an existing distributed algorithm for concurrency control that is based on operation transformations. Since the usability of the algorithm relies on its formal correctness, we present a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to be satisfied in order to ensure consistency in a replicated architecture. We identify desirable properties of operation transformations and show how our approach can be employed to implement group undo. The approach has been applied to build a prototypical group editor for text; some experiences gained are presented. Keywords Concurrency Control, Group Editors, Group Undo, Groupware, Interaction Model, Operation Transformation. INTRODUCTION Groupware systems, i.e., multi-user applications for cooperative work 2, 5, present remarkable challenges for application designers. Concurrency control and ...