SYNG: A middleware for statefull groupware in mobile environments

Abstract

Computer supported collaboration systems, or groupware, are being used more and more in the real life. In the recent years, we are witnessing an increasing demand for supporting such systems in mobile environments. In this paper we address the following questions: ldquoHow are the limited and highly dynamic resources of mobile clients, like network connection, energy supply or display size, influencing the design and deployment of groupware systems?rdquo and ldquoWhat type of policie the users need to specify in order to be able to collaborate in such environments?rdquo. We present a middleware system, called SYNG, that allows a statefull model, suitable for mobile environments. In our system, each user can define a state composed of a number of variables. Examples of such variables include battery usage, quality of network connection, display size, etc. Based on this state, the participant in a collaborative session specifies its own policy for receiving messages from the other participants. Experimental results show good performance and scalability of our approach.