Real-Time Teamwork

February 1998 / BYTE Software Lab Report / Team-Building on the Fly / Real-Time Teamwork

Real-time teamwork applications, such as TeamWave Workplace from TeamWave Software, provide both a persistent teamwork area and real-time interaction between team members that are on-line at th e same time. This requires coordination between the TeamWave server and active TeamWave clients.
Current real-time collaboration tools, such as Microsoft's NetMeeting, use point-to-point communic ation among clients. All meeting participants must be available during the meeting so that the client software can record any information that's made available during the meeting. With TeamWave, the server acts as both the clearinghouse and the repository (which is available at all times). Clients do not interact directly with each other, only with the server. For example, a client clicks on a button to participate in a poll and then queries the server and responds, with the results being presented to all clients after the server processes the response. In this sense, the client/server architecture is actually split between the piece that supports the whiteboard and the piece that supports interaction initiated through the main whiteboard window, such as poll voting done through a separate dialog box.
The current version of TeamWave doesn't use a Web-browser client. But future support for a browser add-on program won't change the client/server architecture, only the workgroup application interface.

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Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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