Vela Project on Collaborative Distributed Design: New Client/Server Implementations

This project brings together five distributed university-based participants, each contributing unique models and architectures of client/server implementations that support one or more design phases in a distributed collaborative environment. ffl MIT: A Web-based CAD collaborative framework CollabTop, built on WebTop, supporting schematic design entry, simulation, and verification. ffl MSU: Custom JavaCADD client/server, based on Java remote method invocation, which offers sophisticated data packing mechanism for passing complex objects between the client/server with minimum programming effort. ffl NCSU: Collaborative user-configurable workflow clients, under the joint control of a synchronous group server (SGS) and an asynchronous group server (AGS). Distributed data is managed by AGS under Concurrent Version System (CVS). Each client can independently visit any number of web-based or legacy tool servers, modeled as OmniExpress nodes in the workflow. ffl Stanford U.: A network com..