Dynamo: a time-based object-oriented model to support distributed collaborative development

An overview is presented of Dynamo, an object-oriented model to support collaborative activities in a distributed environment. Dynamo is designed to meet the requirements that form the common core of engineering design in a variety of domains including: support for data and behavioral abstraction, incremental development and software reuse, decentralized control, ability to keep track of past history and synchronization of access to information, while ensuring maximum concurrency. The most distinguishing feature of the Dynamo model is the prominence of the time dimension in its modeling of computation. The notion of quasi-real-time is introduced. It is an adaptation of the time warp mechanism that forms a single concept under which a wide range of distributed computing functions can be unified, such as transaction management, version and history management and interactive collaboration