Collaboration transparency in the DISCIPLE framework

Sharing single-user software applications is a major goal of synchronous groupware particularly because the majority of applications continues to be developed for single users. We present a mechanism for sharing collaboration-transparent single-user applications in our DISCIPLE collaboration framework. DISCIPLE is the equivalent of a Web browser that allows sharing applets (Java components, both transparent and aware of collaboration). It allows users with no programming background to quickly assemble arbitrary collaborative applications. Even though the presented solutions are specific to Java, many apply to other platforms as well. We introduce a novel concept of resource servers to solve the problem of resource access in collaboration-transparent applications. We also discuss the limitations of the framework in particular and of sharing collaboration-transparent applications in general. The framework has been implemented and tested on a variety of applications. Preliminary experimental results are reported.