[comp.groupware] Groupware Administration and Registration

quasar@bellcore.com (Laurence R. Brothers) (04/03/91)

I'm writing a paper on groupware administration and registration, in
light of a family of systems I've developed.

I'm looking for references on work on this topic. I find hardly anything
in CSCW '86-90, for example.

Specifically, I'm interested in general mechanisms, architectures, and
formalisms for doing the following:

	* apprising network users of the existence of running conferences
	* allowing users access control to these conferences (ie, joining,
	leaving, etc.)
	* performing other administrative function including conference
	initiation, termination, security functions, scheduling, etc.

("Conference" means instance of running groupware application to me).

Naturally, some of these things happen in the context of specific
applications. I'm interested in general mechanisms to permit these
functions to occur in the context of a heterogeneous set of applications,
which may have different internal architectures.

The only reference I've found that's even vaguely pertinent so far is
Greenberg's reference to some intelligent agents such as the "Registrar"
and so forth, and that's apparently intended to be an application-specific
mechanism, not an external system for groupware administration.

Anything else? The "related work" section of my paper is a little thin.....

Thanks in advance.... Oh by the way, the work is all still proprietary
at least until I can publish an external paper.

-- 
	         Laurence R. Brothers (quasar@bellcore.com)
      Bellcore -- Computer Technology Transfer -- Knowledge-Based Systems
       "There is no memory with less satisfaction in it than the memory
            of some temptation we resisted." -- James Branch Cabell

bannon@betelgeuse.csc.ti.com (Tom Bannon) (04/04/91)

quasar@bellcore.com (Laurence R. Brothers) writes:
> I'm writing a paper on groupware administration and registration, in
> light of a family of systems I've developed.
>
> Specifically, I'm interested in general mechanisms, architectures, and
> formalisms for doing the following:
> 
> 	* apprising network users of the existence of running conferences
>	* allowing users access control to these conferences (ie, joining,
>	leaving, etc.)
>	* performing other administrative function including conference
>	initiation, termination, security functions, scheduling, etc.
> 
> ("Conference" means instance of running groupware application to me).
> 
> Naturally, some of these things happen in the context of specific
> applications. I'm interested in general mechanisms to permit these
> functions to occur in the context of a heterogeneous set of applications,
> which may have different internal architectures.
> 
> The only reference I've found that's even vaguely pertinent so far is
> Greenberg's reference to some intelligent agents such as the "Registrar"
> and so forth, and that's apparently intended to be an application-specific
> mechanism, not an external system for groupware administration.
> 
> Anything else? The "related work" section of my paper is a little thin.....

I've written a paper and constructed a couple of prototypes dealing EXACTLY
with this problem.  The paper is:

group: A Distributed Group Specification and Management Service
Thomas J. Bannon and Ivor P. Page
Proceedings of the Summer 1990 UKUUG Conference, pp. 61-76
ISBN 0 9513181 7 9

UKUUG stands for United Kingdom Unix User's Group; the conference was in
London.  The paper may be hard to find, and it is also pretty out of date,
although the basic concepts are still in place (hierarchical group structure,
client-server architecture, application independence, user authentication).
I could possibly email or fax you a copy if you are really interested.

I gave a demo of my system (then substantially evolved and renamed NGS - the
Network Group Service) being used with group talk and group paint programs at
CSCW '90 in LA, but I did not have a paper in the proceedings.  (And the
proceedings don't say anything about all the demos - bit of a hole there I
think).  Greenberg saw my demo and mentioned his paper; I later read it but
found it light on details about his "Registrar".

This was all done as part of my MSCS, but now that that's over I have not been
working on NGS a whole lot, although I do think such a system would be very
nice to have available, especially Internet-wide.  I have been thinking about
finishing up the software and releasing to the net, and maybe I will, but you
know how that goes.

Regards,
Tom

bannon@csc.ti.com