An optimistic method for updating information in distributed collaborative work

Proposes a new method for updating information in distributed collaborative work. The effective performance of collaborative work distributed among several locations requires that information be replicated and freely updated in each distributed server. This is difficult to achieve with existing information-sharing methods such as the WWW and workflow. Our optimistic lock control method enables the direct updating of replicated information in any server while maintaining consistency among all the servers. A server failure is not critical to other servers because there is no master server. This method differs from the traditional master-slave method in which updates are performed in a specific master server. This paper also addresses the dynamic deployment of a new server. Our method is being used on a trial basis for an international software development project between Japan and India.