A Generic WebDAV-Based Document Repository Manager for Collaborative Systems

Collaborative document repository manager (CDRM) is one of the three key components in a collaborative editing system. It provides a repository for storing shared documents and a portal for managing shared documents, initiating collaborative editing sessions, and viewing session information. While most collaborative systems have been using ad hoc and tightly-coupled CDRMs, our work is to provide a generic WebDAV-based CDRM to take advantage of WebDAV´s ubiquitous accessibility, directly writable medium, and access transparency. This WebDAV-based CDRM has been deployed into the CoOffice (collaborative office) and the CoStarOffice (collaborative staroffice) systems for evaluation, demonstration, and usability study