A Methodology for Planning, Analysis, Design and Implementation of Collaborative Databases: Introducing AWT Software

摘要

This paper is based on previous work on cllaborative process modelling, and introduces a methodology for the design and implementation of databases that specifically maintain actors' awareness about various aspects of collaboration. This collaborative database system can be used as a complementary subsystem in other types of collaborative databases systems and workflow applications. Process Awareness Framework (PAF) is used to derive a set of collaborative structures (or, structures for short) that can be used for constructing the database. Using this framework, a model of collaborative process is built first. This model is representative of a collaborative process which uses a a set of collaborative semantic objects and their relationships to one another within the process. This model is then used to identify the collaborative structures within the process that carry awareness information relevant to the process. In other words, these structures are basically records consisting of a set of collaborative semantic objects/concepts that together make up various levels of awareness of the actors within the collaborative process. These structures can then be used to populate the proposed collaborative database. This paper also introduces, for the fist time, a software that implements this methodology using a network management application.