Abstract

Asynchronous collaboration is characterized by the degree of independence collaborators have from one another. In particular, collaborators working asynchronously typically have little need for frequent and fine-grained coordination with one another, and typically do not need to be notified immediately of changes made by others to any shared artifacts they are working with. We present an infrastructure, called Bayou, designed to support the construction of asynchronous collaborative applications. Bayou provides a replicated, weakly-consistent, data storage engine to application writers. The system supports a number of mechanisms for leveraging application semantics; using these mechanisms, applications can implement complex conflict detection and resolution policies, and choose the level of consistency and stability they will see in their databases. We present a number of applications we have built or are building using the Bayou system, and examine how these take advantage of the Bayo...

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