Enriching single-user web applications non-invasively with shared editing support

Abstract

Collaborative real-time applications like Google Docs allow multiple users to edit the very same document simultaneously which supersedes traditional document merging and document locking techniques. However, developing collaborative web applications is a time-consuming and complex endeavor since it requires implementing document synchronization and conflict resolution services. To accelerate the development of collaborative web applications, we present a rapid transformation approach allowing to non-invasively introduce shared editing capabilities into existing single-user web applications. Instead of changing the application's source code, our non-invasive approach leverages a generic collaboration infrastructure that requires only a configuration to provide document synchronization and conflict resolution services. Hence, the effort to incorporate shared editing capabilities is considerably reduced in contrast to conventional approaches where the use of a programing library entails scattered source code changes. Moreover, we report on the results of a user study demonstrating that converted editors are convenient for collaborative work.