Deferred sychronization of distributed objects

Abstract

A method and apparatus is disclosed for .Iadd.data .Iaddend.communication between agents.Iadd., such as those .Iaddend.in an electronic conferencing system. In .[.an electronic conferencing.]. .Iadd.a .Iaddend.system wherein data is shared between a plurality of .[.participants during an electronic conference.]. .Iadd.users.Iaddend., a method is disclosed for maintaining consistency of the data among the .[.participants during the electronic conference.]. .Iadd.users.Iaddend.. The method of the present invention comprises the following steps: a) each .[.participant in the electronic conferencing system.]. .Iadd.user .Iaddend.maintains a local copy of the shared data .[.for the electronic conference during the electronic conference.]. ; b) one of the .[.participants.]. .Iadd.users .Iaddend.commences to perform modifications to an associated local copy of the shared data; c) subsequent to the step of commencing modifications, a .[.participant.]. .Iadd.user .Iaddend.requests an index for the modifications from an arbitrator .[.participant.]. .Iadd.user.Iaddend., wherein the modifications to the associated local copy of the shared data may continue to be performed; d) the arbitrator .[.participant.]. .Iadd.user .Iaddend.responds to the .[.participant.]. .Iadd.user .Iaddend.requesting the index for the modifications; and e) a .[.participant.]. .Iadd.user .Iaddend.modifies the associated local copy of the shared data according to the index received from the arbitrator .[.participant.]. .Iadd.user .Iaddend.and transfers the local modifications to remote .[.participants.]. .Iadd.users.Iaddend.. .Iadd.In one embodiment, the users are participants of an electronic conference, and the shared data are the "meeting" data of the electronic conference. .Iaddend.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION1. Field of the InventionThe present invention is related to .[.teleconferencing.]. .Iadd.computer .Iaddend.systems. More specifically, the present invention is related to mechanisms for communicating data among a plurality of .Iadd.users, e.g. .Iaddend.participants in an electronic conferencing system.2. Background InformationOne of the more developing areas of computer networking is the field of electronic conferencing. Conferencing provides the ability to have an electronic on-line "meeting" between a plurality of users on computer systems in a variety of locations. Users at a variety of sites may communicate with one another as if they were in the same room. Using such application programs, modern communication systems have enabled the ability to have a meeting wherein all users participate in the meeting through their individual computer systems and share data, graphics, text and other types of information. Users may communicate with one another shari...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Obviously, systems wherein the clients merely act as displays and inputs for user requests suffer from severe performance problems due to resulting updates of data from the server, which is typically handled serially by the server.

.Iadd.daemons.Iaddend.. The disadvantage of this approach, similar to the centralized client / server approach is the reliance on the architecture itself.

In the client / server approach, moreover, performance suffers greatly because requests to add or delete objects such as annotations, graphical images or other information on a participant's display is entirely dependent upon communication from the server.

Thus, real-time performance severely suffers in prior art client / server models since approval to act and manipulate upon objects on a participant's display is entirely dependent upon a whole set of dependent variables such as the number of requests to the server pending, the throughput of the communication medium, the number of participants connected, etc.

The problem with this approach is in its generality which requires extensive support for sharing any object while making no assumptions about the behavior of objects.

First, a complex "SmallTalk system" is needed to support the distribution of objects in general.

Second, the concurrency problem for any object is difficult because multiple participants may have different objects in their systems and such different objects may not be .[.ale.].

Yet another of the disadvantages of prior art data conferencing systems is their ability to support the transfer of very large blocks of information.

Also, the transfer of very large pieces of data, such as files and / or images or other data, consumes lots of resources in the system and bandwidth of the communication medium.

Thus, prior art conferencing systems suffer from severe performance penalties caused by the amount of data which may be transmitted within the system during a teleconference.

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