The present invention provides a computer implemented
collaboration system and method for accessing
multiple domain data sources and allowing data from those sources to be analyzed and manipulated within a multi-user distributed environment where all
visualization,
processing, and agent applications work collaboratively. In one embodiment, the
collaboration system (10) is organized into an N-tier infrastructure including a
data management tier (50), an
information access tier (52), a services tier (54), and a
user interface tier (56). The infrastructure of the
collaboration system (10) rides upon a CORBA communications framework. The
data management tier (50) includes data sources (112) and provides
data management capabilities normally supplied by
database management systems. The repository tier (52) is comprised of repository servers (12) and provides
adaptive services to make the data maintained within the data sources (112) available to services in the services tier (54) and the
client tools in the
user interface tier (56). The services tier (54) is comprised of
data channel servers (14), a
library server (16), a participant
server (24), a
context server (26), and a document
server (28). The services tier (54) maintains the majority of the
business logic as applied to a specific domain problem. The
user interface tier (56) is comprised of
thin client tools (18) that allow the user to interact with the data in the data sources (112).