JASMINE

Java Application Sharing in Multiuser INteractive Environments

JASMINE's approach differs from other collaborative approaches in the way that it allows sharing Java applets, from anywhere in the world, AS THEY ARE. A great variety of well-designed applets already exist on the World Wide Web, which were developed to be run as stand-alone and it would not be acceptable or possible for many developers to re-implement or change these programs to make them work in a collaborative way. JASMINE neither proposes a new API for developing collaborative systems nor tries to replace core components at run time.

JASMINE uses a simple management scheme of the collaboration space, as the figure below indicates. A "moderator" of the collaborative session, grants a "permission" for a user to do real time interactions in the shared whiteboard space (indicated by a GREEN colour in the permission button), or refuses a "permission" (indicated by a RED colour).

The JASMINE architecture makes use of the Java Events Delegation Model to extend the capabilities of Java applications in a way that stand-alone applets can be used collaboratively. The delegation event model of JDK1.1 provides a standard mechanism for a source component to generate an event and send it to a set of listeners. Furthermore, the event model also allows to send the event to an adapter, which then works as an event listener for the source and as a source for the listener. Because the handling of events is a crucial task in developing an application, this enhancement makes the development of applets much more flexible and the control of the events much more easy.

JASMINE is a network-centric tool that must be installed in an Internet/Intranet environment. What is only needed is a Java 2 Virtual Maschine (JDK 1.2 or higher).

(For more details see jasmine.pdf)