Supporting Collaborative Writing of XML Documents

ISBN : 978-972-8865-91-7International audienceSynchronisation of replicated shared data is a key issue in collaborative writing systems. Most existing synchronization tools are specific to a particular type of shared data, i.e. text files, calendars, XML files. Therefore, users must use different tools to maintain their different copies up-to-date. In this paper we propose a generic synchronization framework based on the operational transformation approach that supports synchronisation of text files, calendars, XML files by using the same tool. We present how our framework is used to support cooperative writing of XML documents. An implementation is illustrated through the revision control system called So6, which is part of a distributed collaborative technology called LibreSource

Supporting Collaborative Writing of XML Documents

Data management is a key issue in cooperative systems. Anyone who uses more than one computer or collaborates with other people is aware of the problems posed by having multiple copies of shared documents. Most existing synchronization tools are specific to a particular type of shared data i.e. text files, calendars, XML files. Therefore, user should use several tools to maintain their different copies up-to-date. This is not an easy task. To address this issue, we defined a generic synchronization framework based on the operational transformation approach. This framework allows to synchronise text files, calendars, XML files by using the same tool. The main objective of this paper is to present this framework and how it is used to support cooperative writing of XML document. An implementation is illustrated through the revision control system called So6, which is a part of a distributed collaborative technology called LibreSource

Research report : Collaborative Peer 2 Peer Edition: Avoiding Conflicts is Better than Solving Conflicts

Collaborative edition is achieved by distinct sites that work independently on (a copy of) a shared document. Conflicts may arise during this process and must be solved by the collaborative editor. In pure Peer to Peer collaborative editing, no centralization nor locks nor time-stamps are used which make conflict resolution difficult. We propose an algorithm which relies on the notion or semantics dependence and avoids the need of any integration transformation to solve conflicts. Furthermore, it doesn't use any history file recording operations performed since starting the edition process. We show how to define editing operations for semi-structured documents i.e. XML-like trees, that are enriched with informations derived for free from the editing process. Then we define the semantics dependence relation required by the algorithm and we present preliminary results obtained by a prototype implementation.Comment: 12 page

The role of Enterprise portals in Enterprise Integration

Today’s enterprises are moving business systems to the Internet - to connect people, business processes, and people to business processes in enterprise and across enterprise boundaries. The portal brings it all together: business processes, departmental sites, knowledge management resources, enterprise management systems, CRM systems, analytics, email, calendars, external content, transactions, administration, workflow, and more. The goal of this paper is to present the role of the Enterprise Portal in internal and external enterprise integration.Portal, Enterprise Portal, Integration, ETL, EAI, EII

Peer to Peer Optimistic Collaborative Editing on XML-like trees

Collaborative editing consists in editing a common document shared by several independent sites. This may give rise to conficts when two different users perform simultaneous uncompatible operations. Centralized systems solve this problem by using locks that prevent some modifications to occur and leave the resolution of confict to users. On the contrary, peer to peer (P2P) editing doesn't allow locks and the optimistic approach uses a Integration Transformation IT that reconciliates the conficting operations and ensures convergence (all copies are identical on each site). Two properties TP1 and TP2, relating the set of allowed operations Op and the transformation IT, have been shown to ensure the correctness of the process. The choice of the set Op is crucial to define an integration operation that satisfies TP1 and TP2. Many existing algorithms don't satisfy these properties and are indeed incorrect i.e. convergence is not guaranteed. No algorithm enjoying both properties is known for strings and little work has been done for XML trees in a pure P2P framework (that doesn't use time-stamps for instance). We focus on editing unranked unordered labeled trees, so-called XML-like trees that are considered for instance in the Harmony pro ject. We show that no transformation satisfying TP1 and TP2 can exist for a first set of operations but we show that TP1 and TP2 hold for a richer set of operations. We show how to combine our approach with any convergent editing process on strings (not necessarily based on integration transformation) to get a convergent process

Query independent measures of annotation and annotator impact

The modern-day web-user plays a far more active role in the creation of content for the web as a whole. In this paper we present Annoby, a free-text annotation system built to give users a more interactive experience of the events of the Rugby World Cup 2007. Annotations can be used for query-independent ranking of both the annotations and the original recorded video footage (or documents) which has been annotated, based on the social interactions of a community of users. We present two algorithms, AuthorRank and MessageRank, designed to take advantage of these interactions so as to provide a means of ranking documents by their social impact