API Design Recommendations for Facilitating Conversion of Single-user Applications into Collaborative Applications

Kai Lin; David Chen; Geoff Dromey; Steven Xia; Chengzheng Sun

3rd International ICST Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharin

Research Article

API Design Recommendations for Facilitating Conversion of Single-user Applications into Collaborative Applications

Cite: BibTeX Plain Text

@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/COLCOM.2007.4553849,
    author={Kai Lin and David Chen and Geoff Dromey and Steven Xia and Chengzheng Sun},
    title={API Design Recommendations for Facilitating Conversion of Single-user Applications into Collaborative Applications},
    proceedings={3rd International ICST Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharin},
    publisher={IEEE},
    proceedings_a={COLLABORATECOM},
    year={2008},
    month={6},
    keywords={API recommendations collaborative system design operational transformation},
    doi={10.1109/COLCOM.2007.4553849}
}

Kai Lin
David Chen
Geoff Dromey
Steven Xia
Chengzheng Sun
Year: 2008
API Design Recommendations for Facilitating Conversion of Single-user Applications into Collaborative Applications
COLLABORATECOM
IEEE
DOI: 10.1109/COLCOM.2007.4553849

Kai Lin¹^,*, David Chen¹^,*, Geoff Dromey¹^,*, Steven Xia²^,*, Chengzheng Sun²^,*

1: School of Information and Communication Technology, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD 4111, Australia
2: School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798

*Contact email: K.Lin@griffith.edu.au, D.Chen@griffith.edu.au, G.Dromey@griffith.edu.au, StevenXia@ntu.edu.sg, CZSun@ntu.edu.sg

Abstract

Recent advancements in collaboration technology have shown that it is possible to convert existing single-user applications into real-time collaborative applications without modifying the source codes of the single-user applications. Such conversion relies on the API (Application Programming Interface) provided by the single-user applications. Poorly designed APIs make such conversion difficult, inefficient, or even impossible. Until now, it is not well understood what features APIs should provide to facilitate conversion of single-user applications into collaborative applications. This paper presents recommendations of the features single-user application APIs should provide to facilitate conversion. The results are based on what we have learnt from converting Microsoft Visio, into real-time collaborative Visio (CoVisio), and our previous experience in building CoWord and CoPowerPoint.

Keywords: API recommendations collaborative system design operational transformation

Published: 2008-06-27
Publisher: IEEE
Modified: 2011-07-20

: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/COLCOM.2007.4553849