A document workspace for collaboration and annotation based on XML technology

With increasing numbers of users, the World Wide Web has demonstrated its success in information sharing and exchange on the Internet. The Web also has a high potential as a platform for distributed groupware systems. However, cooperation among a smaller workgroup members generally requires more powerful interaction than what the basic Web system can support now. To support cooperative users in a workgroup with an easy and effective working environment for document processing, we design a document collaboration and retrieval system (DCRS) based on XML technology, which is an emerging technology for data presentation. The system can support users in an environment to exchange and share documents and to make annotations in an easy and effective way. We propose an information object based on XML technology in the system design. The model can facilitate the system design and provide good extensibility for future development.