Modifying CSCW environments dynamically for supporting virtual enterprises

Abstract

In computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) environments data and operations can be shared by users and/or they can have their own defined data and operations which may not be shared by other users. The notion of views in (object-oriented) database systems can be applied in CSCW for realizing such environments. We define two kinds of environments, namely, local and global, by extending the deputy object model. The local environment is a personal environment that specifies data and operations available to each user and the global environment defines the global data and operations and also describes how these local environments are created. When a global environment is changed, then all its local environments should also be changed. We discuss how the changes to the global environment can be dynamically reflected in all local environments for supporting virtual enterprises. We show that this dynamic modification of local environments can be achieved by defining the mapping between the local and global environments using Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules and by defining the metadata of each global and local environment as a state.