Multimedia information sharing in the heterogeneous environment

A hotel management information system requires a storage and retrieval subsystem for text and image information, but the information is held in heterogeneous databases in a local network environment. Application sharing information will become a key component of synchronous groupware computers and will permit the simultaneous use of off-the-shelf applications such as text processors and spreadsheets by a group of cooperating users. Special software is inserted between application and multiplex input streams. Application output and user input have to be converted between different image and window systems. This paper introduces the concepts of application sharing, image stream conversion and their combination. It presents two sharing systems with integrated image conversion enabling the concurrent use of a single user application and the use of multiple window displays