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A Fast Operational Transformation Algorithm for Mobile and Asynchronous Collaboration
December 2010 (vol. 21 no. 12)
pp. 1707-1720
ASCII Text
x 
 
Bin Shao, Du Li, Ning Gu, "A Fast Operational Transformation Algorithm for Mobile and Asynchronous Collaboration," IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 21, no. 12, pp. 1707-1720, December, 2010.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/TPDS.2010.64,
author = {Bin Shao and Du Li and Ning Gu},
title = {A Fast Operational Transformation Algorithm for Mobile and Asynchronous Collaboration},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems},
volume = {21},
number = {12},
issn = {1045-9219},
year = {2010},
pages = {1707-1720},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TPDS.2010.64},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
TI - A Fast Operational Transformation Algorithm for Mobile and Asynchronous Collaboration
IS - 12
SN - 1045-9219
SP1707
EP1720
EPD - 1707-1720
A1 - Bin Shao,
A1 - Du Li,
A1 - Ning Gu,
PY - 2010
KW - Collaboration
KW - concurrency control
KW - data consistency
KW - mobile computing
KW - operational transformation
KW - optimistic replication.
VL - 21
JA - IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
ER -
 
Bin Shao, Fudan University, Shanghai
Du Li, Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto
Ning Gu, Fudan University, Shanghai
In a mobile collaboration environment, the shared files are often replicated so that the users can work in parallel during periods of disconnection. When reconnected, sequences of updates made by different users are merged to produce a consistent view of shared files. This paper presents a novel transformation-based merging algorithm for supporting mobile collaboration. Compared to alternative optimistic consistency control methods, it can merge any updates to the same file automatically at the finest granularity without causing loss of work. Moreover, it improves the time complexity of the state-of-the-art transformation-based merging algorithms from O(n^3) to O(n), where n is the size of either sequence when their sizes are comparable. This improvement is drastic and important especially for mobile devices that run on batteries and have limited processing power.

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Index Terms:
Collaboration, concurrency control, data consistency, mobile computing, operational transformation, optimistic replication.
Citation:
Bin Shao, Du Li, Ning Gu, "A Fast Operational Transformation Algorithm for Mobile and Asynchronous Collaboration," IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 21, no. 12, pp. 1707-1720, Dec. 2010, doi:10.1109/TPDS.2010.64
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