Applying the GWO Model to Relaxed Collaborative Systems

Abstract

Building collaborative applications is still a challenging task. A collaborative application can be viewed as a class of distributed shared memory system. A distinctive property of these systems is their memory consistency model. In this paper, we argue that there is a relationship between different collaboration styles, on the one hand, and different memory consistency models, on the other. In particular, we propose a practical collaboration style, exemplified by a collaborative electronic organizer, that can be supported by the GWO memory consistency model, a rather relaxed model stricter only than local consistency. The advantage of the proposed style is that it reduces the amount of information that must be exchanged among the processors. Because there have been no propositions of the specific rules---i.e., the protocol---that the processors in a system must follow to implement the GWO model, we also propose a protocol that exactly matches the properties of the model.