Conflict Resolution for User-Selected Names in Collaborative Systems

In many real-world applications, collaboration is carried out by having the users share data objects, for example by placing them in a single file system accessible to all collaborators. This requires a naming scheme that is appropriate both for the single user, providing mnemonic references to the objects, and for the collaborative group, allowing sharing. We consider optimistic replication of the operations on names (such as creation, modification, etc.) to all collaborators, focusing on the problem of divergent name updates by two or more users. We show that, as the user interacts directly with objects´ names, conflict resolution techniques must consider the semantics associated with a name (both by the user and the collaborative group at whole). We propose an automatic conflict resolution technique that minimizes the semantic loss in the namespace when it contains user-selected names, and supports recovery of any lost semantics by the user.