Technology to support groupware: the CARAT architecture

As groupware systems are implemented, designers and developers will be faced with sets of unfamiliar requirements, calling on many disciplines: graphical user interfaces, distributed databases, information retrieval, and others. Individual groupware system requirements are not necessarily complex or unique. It is the combination of requirements which presents a formidable barrier to the creation of systems. Meeting this challenge will require both new and innovative use of existing software technologies. The authors present some of the special software-based requirements of groupware, and give generic solutions to them. Collaborative research is an important intellectual activity that can benefit significantly from comprehensive automated support. They evaluate how architectural requirements are being met in CARAT, a collaborative research system in order to inform the design of the larger class of general groupware systems.<>