CoOpP2P .NET : a peer-to-peer collaborative groupware application for .NET

Abstract

The networked computer is an essential tool within any office environment. Nowadays, people are also expected to work from various locations from hotel rooms to client sites. Against this background we see the emergence of a class of applications that facilitate this; Collaborative Groupware. Another development is the increasing importance of computers on the edges of a network in what are known as peer to peer networks, where each node shares responsibilities of a server and client. The result of merging these two technologies is Peer to Peer Collaborative Groupware. In this project, we propose a framework that allows the setting up of Peer to Peer Networks on the fly and facilitates the sharing of collaborative tools over this network. A searchable network of human resources is set up and peers are able to create groups from select peers. A transparent messaging scheme based on XML is proposed which makes 3'" party tool development easy.