Operation transforms for a distributed shared spreadsheet

摘要

The Distributed Operation Transform (dOPT), proposed by Ellis and GIbbs, is used to define concurrently updatable shared objects. Ellis and Gibbs give the operation transforms that define a simple shared text editor supporting single character insertions and deletilns on a linear buffer. We report herre on the construction of operation transforms for a more sophisticated group-ware application: a shared spreadsheet. We identify a set of abstract operations that characterize the operations on a spreadsheet. Using Cormack's Calculus for COncurrent Update, which extends and corrects dOPT, we give the transforms on these operations necessary to define a shared spreadsheet. We use the transforms to build a shared version of sc, the Unix spreadsheet due to Gosling.