Cooperative problem solving using database conversations

Cooperative problem solving is a joint style of producing and consuming data. Unfortunately, most database mechanisms developed so far; are more appropriate for competitive usage than for a cooperative working style. They mostly adopt an operational point of view which binds data to applications. Data-oriented mechanisms like check-in/out avoid this binding but do not improve synchronization towards concurrent usage of data. Conversations are an application-independent, tight framework for jointly modifying common data. The idea is to create transaction-spanning conversational working stages that organize different contributions instead of serializing accesses. To illustrate the conversation concept, an extended query language with conversational operations is presented.<>