Collaborative computing: a multi-client multi-server environment

Most people think that collaboration implies that several people are sharing work on a single application with shared displays. In fact, collaboration is more. It includes the concurrent control of multiple applications by a collaborative group. To enable this more powerful form of collaboration, we show how to combine earlier mechanisms for single client, multiple server computing with a new mechanism called ESP (Event Sense Protocol) for multiple client, multiple server computing. We describe two extended examples — a working prototype of a multi-user, heterogeneous, distributed debugger and a commercial banking application.