A major trend in day-to-day computing involves moving seamlessly from workstation to wireless handheld devices. A second major trend is continuous collaboration with colleagues. Accommodating and supporting these trends is extremely difficult because of the vastly different platforms and communication networks.
The objective of the proposal is to develop and demonstrate a middleware framework for performance-optimized ubiquitous collaboration over heterogeneous networks. It will enable quality-of-service applications and support selective data distribution. The key component of the proposed framework is the collaboration bus, which is a middleware to support group communication in data-centric groupware. The proposed research includes: a) algorithms and methods for dynamic monitoring of network capabilities, b) data transformation and adaptation policies for adjusting network traffic, and c) assessing and controlling the performance impact involving in broadcasting each message.
Some of the key elements of the research are the development of Data Adaptation Agents. These agents transform and change the data so that it can be used by different applications and hardware. The proposed research will bring new capabilities for multi-user collaboration within reach.
