Networking and Shared Data Toolkit
rapidly prototyping a distributed real time system

.NetworkingGT is a toolkit for rapidly prototyping groupware applications with the Microsoft.NET platform. It provides the shared dictionary: a centrally coordinated distributed shared memory system for inter-application communication. Programmers work with the shared dictionary as though it were a hash table. Values are identified with string keys that look like paths in a conventional disk file system. Behind the API the programmer works with, the networking infrastructure takes care of serializable values and distributing them through the client/server architecture. Programmers can monitor the dictionary for changes with subscriptions.

This work continues our prior work in environments within Groupkit, then our later .Networking system. The difference between .Networking and .NetworkingGT is that .NetworkingGT uses the GT Toolkit as the underlying networking architecture.

Researchers

Brian De Alwis (Research Associate)
Michael Boyle
Carl Gutwin (Supervisor)
Saul Greenberg (Supervisor)

Software (various versions)

Key Publications

de Alwis, B., Gutwin, G. and Greenberg, S. (2009)
GT/SD: Performance and Simplicity in a Groupware Toolkit. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems - ACM EICS'09. ACM Press, 10 pages, July 14-17.
PDF Paper
Boyle, M. and Greenberg, S. (2005)
Rapidly Prototyping Multimedia Groupware. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems - DMS'05. (Conference held in Banff, Alberta, Canada), Knowledge Systems Institute, Illinois, USA, September 5-7. Earlier version as Report 2005-786-17, May.
PDF Paper

Other Publications

Boyle, M. (2003)
Collabrary Shared Dictionary v1.0.17: Programming Paradigm and Wire Protocol. Research report 2003-731-34, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, January.
PDF Paper
Boyle, M. and Greenberg, S. (2003)
Grouplab Collabrary Toolkit: Rapid Prototyping Toolkit for Multimedia Groupware. Research report iLab-2003-3, Grouplab, Dept. Computer Science, University of Calgary. Video report, duration 1:18.
Video File
Boyle, M. and Greenberg, S. (2002)
GroupLab Collabrary: A Toolkit for Multimedia Groupware. In Workshop on Network Services for Groupware, Held at ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - ACM CSCW'02. (J. Patterson, Ed.), November 17.
PDF Paper PowerPoint Presentation