Intermezzo Implementation Notes

Abstract

A collaboration support environment is a software system which developers can build on top of to provide more robust and flexible collaborative operations. This paper describes the architecture of the Intermezzo collaboration support environment. Intermezzo is a set of libraries, servers, and conventions which developers can use to construct collaborative applications.

Intermezzo does not attempt to provide support for all aspects of collaborative software development. Instead, it restricts itself to providing support for the sharing of "facilitating data." Facilitating data is data which is used by applications and the collaboration support environment itself to facilitate the process of collaboration. An example of facilitating data is information about which users are currently active in collaborations.

Facilitating data is distinct from artifacts. Artifacts are the actual data of discourse or concern of the collaborative process. As an example, the text document which is edited by a shared word processor is an artifact. Intermezzo does not provide facilities to support the sharing and use of artifacts.