Formal Model of Collaboration on the Network

摘要

A formal model of collaboration is proposed in this article. Model has four elements: information flows with attributes, a set of participants, a function from one information flow to the subset of participants, and a function from one participant to the subset of information flows. We show that this model can represent collaboration systems and tools by providing appropriate values to attributes of an information flow. Furthermore, this model includes other systems such as DBMS and Information Retrieval Systems. We show that new combinations of values derive new collaboration styles; five typical examples of new collaboration types are described in this article.