(2000-03). MOOSCo – Multi-User Object-Oriented Environments with Separation of Concerns. Financed by FCT (POSI/CHS/33127/99). National Project. Participants: FCUL/Portugal, INESC/portugal.
Distributed multi-user interactive systems are an extremely relevant application area. Applications such as virtual environments, distributed simulation, computer supported collaborative work (CSCW), multi-user games or dungeons (MUDs), and multi-user object-oriented environments (MOOs) are becoming increasingly pervasive. These applications pose a very rich and complex set of requirements from the analysis, software engineering and system support point-of-view. A promising approach to tackle the complexity of these systems is to rely on configurable architectures that are able to support component re-utilization and composition. The project proposes to study the difficulties in applying a component-based approach in a vertical and integrated manner, from analysis to implementation. The project brings together three teams with experience in using and building configurable components at different levels of abstraction: component based analysis of cooperative applications (Electronic Meetings LASIGE team), configurable distributed software frameworks (INESC Software Engineering team) and configurable communication protocols (Infrastructure Protocols LASIGE team). The project will define an architecture that will be applied in the MOOs context. MOO environments constitute a challenge for object-oriented distributed systems theory and practice due to its unique requirements for scalability, adaptability, usability, dynamic changes, non-functional domains to be considered, and efficiency. The complete satisfaction of these requirements is not easy and may result in conflicting and inconsistent solutions. A challenging aspect of the project is to study policies and mechanisms to ensure that consistent configuration and composition choices are made at all levels of the architecture.The work to reach the project goals is divided in several tasks: (1) Identify the user models that are relevant for MOOs in order to classify the variabilities inherent to the MOO applications. (2) Design composible and customizable middleware abstractions to support user models and their variabilities, and allow the construction of MOO application that are easily tuned and can evolve. Implement those abstractions as an object-oriented framework. (3) Design composible and customizable infrastructure protocols, offering different quality of service, to be used by the middleware abstractions. (4) Integrate and validate the results from the previous tasks in a concrete MOO system.
Project’s Documentation
Papers (supported by the project)
Antunes, P. and L. Carriço (2005). “Modeling the Information structures of groupware.” Sistemas de Informação, vol. 17, pp. 21-37. ISSN: 0872-7031. http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~paa/papers/apsi-05-mw.pdf
P. Antunes and C. Costa, “From Genre Analysis to the Design of Meetingware,” M. Pendergast, K. Schmidt, C. Simone, and M. Tremaine, Eds. Proceedings of the 2003 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, GROUP ’03. Sanibel Island, Florida: ACM Press, 2003, pp. 302-310. (ISBN: 1-58113-693-5). http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~paa/papers/group-03.pdf
P. Antunes and L. Carriço, “Modeling the Information Structures of Meetingware.” Workshop de Sistemas de Informação Multimédia e Cooperativos, COOP-MEDIA ’03. Porto, 2003.http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~paa/papers/coopmedia-03-mware.pdf
C. Costa, P. Antunes, and J. Dias, “Integrating Two Organisational Systems Through Communication Genres.” Fifth International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages (Coordination 2002). York, UK: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, 2002.http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~paa/papers/coordination-02.pdf
C. Costa and P. Antunes, “Evaluating EMS Value – The Case of a Small Accountancy Firm.” 4th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2002). Ciudad Real, Spain, 2002. http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~paa/papers/iceis-02.pdf
C. Costa, P. Antunes, and J. Dias, “EMS/PDA: Connecting Meetings with People in Organisations,” in Proceedings of the 24th Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia, IRIS 24. Ulvik in Hardanger, Norway, 2001. http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~paa/papers/iris-01.pdf
P. Antunes, C. Costa, and J. Dias, “Applying Genre Analysis to EMS Design: The Example of a Small Accounting Firm.” Seventh International Workshop on Groupware, CRIWG 2001. Darmstadt, Germany: IEEE CS Press, 2001, pp. 74-81. (ISBN: 0-7695-1351-4).http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~paa/papers/criwg-01.pdf
Reports
Projecto MOOSCo, Relatório Anual de Progresso. 2002.
Projecto MOOSCo, MOOSCo: Muti-User Object-Oriented Environments with Separation of Concerns – Project Porposal. 2000.