Flexible communication support for CSCW applications

Abstract

Modern computer-supported cooperative work applications (CSCW) supporting same-time/different-place interaction are required to open several communication channels. Each of these channels has its own quality of service (QoS) and is implemented by a specific protocol stack. Typically, these channels need to be synchronized but inter-stack dependencies are hard to express with current communication architectures. The paper proposes a novel approach to the development of communication software supporting a style of micro-protocol composition that satisfies the requirements imposed by CSCW applications.