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Concurrency control in groupware systems

Published:01 June 1989Publication History
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Abstract

Groupware systems are computer-based systems that support two or more users engaged in a common task, and that provide an interface to a shared environment. These systems frequently require fine-granularity sharing of data and fast response times. This paper distinguishes real-time groupware systems from other multi-user systems and discusses their concurrency control requirements. An algorithm for concurrency control in real-time groupware systems is then presented. The advantages of this algorithm are its simplicity of use and its responsiveness: users can operate directly on the data without obtaining locks. The algorithm must know some semantics of the operations. However the algorithm's overall structure is independent of the semantic information, allowing the algorithm to be adapted to many situations. An example application of the algorithm to group text editing is given, along with a sketch of its proof of correctness in this particular case. We note that the behavior desired in many of these systems is non-serializable.

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              • Published in

                cover image ACM SIGMOD Record
                ACM SIGMOD Record  Volume 18, Issue 2
                June 1989
                442 pages
                • cover image ACM Conferences
                  SIGMOD '89: Proceedings of the 1989 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data
                  June 1989
                  451 pages
                  ISBN:0897913175
                  DOI:10.1145/67544

                Copyright © 1989 ACM

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                Association for Computing Machinery

                New York, NY, United States

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                • Published: 1 June 1989

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