Defining Task Interdependencies and Coordination Mechanisms for Collaborative Systems
A. B. Raposo and
H. Fuks
COOP 2002 - Fifth International Conference
on the Design of Cooperative Systems. Saint-Raphael, France. 4-7 June 2002.
Abstract
This paper addresses the issue of coordination, which is an essential matter to the specification of
activities in collaborative systems. An activity can be described as a set of interdependent tasks. In
order to specify task interdependencies, an extensible model encompassing a set of temporal and resource
management relations is initially presented. Then, Petri Nets are used to formally model coordination
mechanisms for those interdependencies. The separation between tasks and interdependencies/coordination
mechanisms allows for the deployment of different coordination policies in the same collaborative system
by only changing the coordination mechanisms. Moreover, the coordination mechanisms, like the related
interdependencies, are generic and may be reused in several collaborative systems.
Keywords: CSCW, Coordination, Petri Nets, Synchronization, System Design.
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