Multiple Users For all the research on collaboration and groupwork in the 1990s,
surprisingly few tools support multiple simultaneous users. As real-time communication
and collaboration has spread to the general populace through chat, online games
and Internet video and phone calls, software developers have been left like the
proverbial cobbler??™s children.
Allowing multiple simultaneous users to edit the same diagram seems unnecessary:
attempts at this in the 1990s revealed more problems than bene?¬?ts. It is however useful
to allowmultiple users to update the information contained in multiple distinct objects
within that diagram: the objects may be reused in several places, and edited from
386 TOOLS FOR DSM
there. Everyone should be able to see the latest version of a diagram and reuse its
elements, but only one user should be able to edit it.
When designing the meta-metamodel, or to be more exact the data structures that
will be used for storing model data, the creators of the DSM environment must
consider multiuser issues. They must choose a meta-metamodel that avoids creating
hot spots: structures that become a target for parallel updates by multiple users. Where
that is unavoidable, they must implement data structures that are appropriate for
expected patterns of multiuser access (Kelly, 1998).
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