Event-Based Awareness Services for P2P Groupware Systems

P2P systems enable decentralised applications for supporting collaborating groups and communities, where the collaboration may involve both sharing of data and sharing of group processes among group members. In such applications, monitoring and awareness are critical functionalities required for an effective collaboration. However, to date there has been little research into providing generic, application-independent awareness in P2P groupware systems. We present a distributed event-based awareness approach for such systems that provides different forms of awareness through a set of interoperating, low-level awareness services. The user and technical requirements for the approach are motivated with reference to Project-Based Learning in a P2P environment. We describe the implementation of a superpeer P2P network on a Cloud platform and the provision of reliable awareness services (AaaS - Awareness as a Service) from the Cloud. We report on the outcomes of an empirical evaluation of the performance and scalability of the approach.

[1]  Alexandra Poulovassilis,et al.  Building Event-Based Services for Awareness in P2P Groupware Systems , 2013, 2013 Eighth International Conference on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing.

[2]  Samuli Pekkola,et al.  Meeting others - supporting situation awareness on the WWW , 2001, Decis. Support Syst..

[3]  Edward Nawarecki,et al.  Peer-to-Peer : an Enabling Technology for Next-Generation E-learning , 2006 .

[4]  Carl Gutwin,et al.  Workspace Awareness in Real-Time Distributed Groupware: Framework, Widgets, and Evaluation , 1996, BCS HCI.

[5]  Xuemin Shen,et al.  Handbook of Peer-to-Peer Networking , 2009 .

[6]  Richard Bentley,et al.  Supporting Collaborative Information Sharing with the WWW: The BSCW Shared Workspace System , 1996, World Wide Web J..

[7]  Norman W. Paton,et al.  Active Rules in Database Systems , 1998, Monographs in Computer Science.

[8]  Fatos Xhafa,et al.  Efficient peerGroup management in JXTA-Overlay P2P system for developing groupware tools , 2009, The Journal of Supercomputing.

[9]  Chun Chen,et al.  Reliable communication based on P2P architecture on real-time collaborative editing system , 2004, 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design.

[10]  Wolfgang Nejdl,et al.  Constructing a web-based asynchronous and synchronous collaboration environment using WebDAV and Lotus Sametime , 2001, SIGUCCS '01.

[11]  Timothy J. Ellis,et al.  A Recommendation for the Use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to Bridge the LMS to LOR Data Movement Interoperability Gap for Education , 2010 .

[12]  DOU Wan-Chun,et al.  P 2 P-Based Knowledge Grid Oriented Toward Cooperative Cognition , 2006 .

[13]  Tore Risch,et al.  EDUTELLA: a P2P networking infrastructure based on RDF , 2002, WWW.

[14]  Fred S. Annexstein,et al.  An Educational Tool for the 21 st Century : Peer-to-peer computing , 2003 .

[15]  Alexandra Poulovassilis,et al.  Event-condition-action rules on RDF metadata in P2P environments , 2006, Comput. Networks.

[16]  Bill Karakostas,et al.  A peer to peer (P2P) architecture for dynamic workflow management , 2004, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[17]  Silvia Rossi,et al.  Towards Monitoring of Group Interactions and Social Roles via Overhearing , 2004, CIA.

[18]  Ashraf Matrawy,et al.  A Multilayer Peer-to-Peer Framework for Distributed Synchronous Collaboration , 2006, IEEE Internet Computing.

[19]  Gerald Reif,et al.  MOTION: a peer-to-peer platform for mobile teamwork support , 2002, Proceedings 26th Annual International Computer Software and Applications.

[20]  Sérgio Duarte,et al.  Integrating Synchronous and Asynchronous Interactions in Groupware Applications , 2005, CRIWG.

[21]  Nikolaos Avouris,et al.  A Peer-To-Peer Architecture for Synchronous Collaboration over Low-Bandwidth Networks , 2003 .

[22]  Wolfgang Nejdl,et al.  Smart Space for Learning: A Mediation Infrastructure for Learning Services , 2003 .

[23]  Gerald Reif,et al.  Evaluation of a publish/subscribe system for collaborative and mobile working , 2002, Proceedings. Eleventh IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises.

[24]  David Cleary,et al.  Building Richer JXTA Applications with Collaborative Spaces in a Peer-2-Peer Environment , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[25]  Demetris G. Galatopoullos,et al.  A P2P SOA enabling group collaboration through service composition , 2008, ICPS '08.

[26]  Schahram Dustdar,et al.  OMNIX: A Topology-Independent P2P Middleware , 2003, CAiSE Workshops.

[27]  Jie Ma,et al.  APPLE: A Novel P2P Based e-Learning Environment , 2004, IWDC.

[28]  Alexandra Poulovassilis,et al.  Requirements for Distributed Event-Based Awareness in P2P Groupware Systems , 2010, 2010 IEEE 24th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops.

[29]  Joerg Zumbach,et al.  Supporting Distributed Problem-Based Learning: The Use of Feedback Mechanisms in Outline Learning , 2004 .

[30]  Michael Coghlan,et al.  Online Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice , 2004, J. Educ. Technol. Soc..

[31]  Carl Gutwin,et al.  Workspace awareness in real-time distributed groupware , 1998 .

[32]  Jianhua Ma,et al.  TOMSCOP - a synchronous P2P collaboration platform over JXTA , 2004, 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, 2004. Proceedings..

[33]  Paolo Busetta,et al.  An approach to the integration of peer-to-peer systems with active environments , 2003, WOA.

[34]  Shanika Karunasekera,et al.  CAESAR: middleware for complex service-oriented peer-to-peer applications , 2007, MW4SOC '07.

[35]  Jesús Favela,et al.  Opportunistic Interaction in P2P Ubiquitous Environments , 2004, CRIWG.

[36]  Jianhua Ma,et al.  A P2P groupware system with decentralized topology for supporting synchronous collaborations , 2003, Proceedings. 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds.