Flexible Collaborative Support: an architecture and application

The field of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) has led to many advances in both the study of cooperative work groups and the development of collaboration technologies. However, a number of key research issues remain. Two of these issues are: (1) the seamless integration of support for asynchronous and synchronous cooperative work, and (2) the ability for individual users to flexibly change or tailor their mode of collaboration while engaged in real time interaction. The paper describes a new approach to handling both these issues. The approach is called the Flexible Collaborative Support (FLECS) framework. It relies on the use of active database technology, an explicit organizational model, and flexible transaction management. This approach bridges the gap between CSCW and multi-user database systems. It does so by supporting awareness of other users´ presence in the information space as well as providing visualization of other users´ actions, thus fulfilling the most fundamental requirement of CSCW systems. At the same time, the FLECS framework capitalizes on the data security and consistency management methods which have formed the foundation of multi-user database systems. The paper also presents CityCollab and its evaluation by a community of users. CityCollab is a collaborative system, which supports the processing of Requests for Work in the context of civil infrastructure management. CityCollab represents an instantiation of the more general FLECS architecture/framework