Sharing objects over the Internet: the Mushroom approach

This paper reports on the Mushroom project. The project is developing a software framework for collaborative working and user interaction on the Internet. The paper illustrates some of the required features in the context of an application scenario and outlines those aspects of the Mushroom system architecture that support the sharing of information. The project's motivation is to address the problems of coordinated user interaction, distribution and privacy. Mrooms are interactive environments for groups of collaborating users. They provide a shared space in which users are aware of one another while working on shared objects. Their boundaries provide a triggering mechanism for consistency and privacy checks. In contrast to other systems with room-based metaphors, Mushroom focuses on a scalable and flexible system architecture using replicated state, group communication and event-based updates.