A Graphical User Interface for a Cooperative Design Database

A summary of a model of sharing objects in cooperative applications is presented first, followed by a brief description of a cooperative design environment. Information management tools (node browsers, node editors, event/status monitors) and their user interfaces are then presented. The design of cooperative user interfaces based on the adopted model of object sharing is discussed in more detail, with emphasis on monitoring changes to objects, physical and logical object locking, refreshing the application cache, supporting change propagation and maintaining data consistency.