Designing the communications infrastructure of groupware systems

Abstract

In the development of groupware systems a well designed communications infrastructure is required, due to the high complexity of the communication scenario. Also, the design and implementation of coordination and collaboration mechanisms depends on the communications infrastructure. Actually there are no well known guidelines to design this infrastructure. Therefore, this paper proposes an architectural pattern that helps carry out the design of this communications infrastructure. The proposed pattern supports all the groupware systems communication scenarios, taking in account their particularities. This pattern has been used in the design of several groupware applications and a groupware framework with very good results.