CoFrame: a framework for CSCW applications based on grid and Web services

Though 20 years have passed since the birth of CSCW, the original goal of it is not reached as well as people expected. This situation is mostly due to the supporting technology especially the infrastructure. Today, great changes have taken place in technology, including grid computing and Web services. These technologies, we think, significantly affect the application of CSCW. In this paper, a framework called CoFrame is proposed to answer the challenges faced by CSCW. Based on the emerging grid and Web service technologies, CoFrame provides some general yet flexible cooperation related services and organizes them into different layers. The elaborately designed services and architecture make CoFrame adaptive to diverse requirements of different domains. The paper details the framework and demonstrates its application with a case study in e-learning.