How to Shake Hands

System Architecture and Flow

Clients load the URL for the collaboratory server, which downloads an applet from a web server. Java servers for various collaboratory elements run on the same node or cluster as the web server. The user can then choose among collaboratory services and, based on the services selected, the applet makes connections to the required set of collaboratory servers.

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System Architecture

Once the connections to the collaboratory servers is set up, the basic paradigm is similar for the various applications. User events are marshalled by the applet, and sent to the appropriate Java server; the Java servers propagate them to the clients that are subscribed to that channel and also log the events. Clients are able to use the archive information for later playback.

The servers keep track of the ongoing parties, and multicast data to the appropriate clients. A client applet joining a party is fed either the current event or the sequence of events to date, so that the current view is obtained. Servers can communicate with each other via a conference bus.

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Vishal Mehra <vishal@watson.ibm.com>
Daniel Dias dias@watson.ibm.com
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