LaCOLLA

LaCOLLA is a fully decentralized infrastructure/middleware for building collaborative applications that provides general purpose collaborative functionalities. The provision of those functionalities will avoid applications deal with most of complexities derived from groups and its members, what will help inclusion of collaborative aspects.

Implementation of LaCOLLA follows the peer-to-peer paradigm and pays special attention to autonomy of its members and to self-organization of the components of the middleware. Another key aspect is that resources (e.g. storage) and services (e.g. Authorization) are provided by its members (avoiding dependency from agents not belonging to group).

• Dissemination of events (immediate & consistent): information about what is occurring in the group is spread among members of the group as events. All connected members receive this information right after it occurs. Disconnected members receive it during the re-connection process.

• Storage (virtually strong consistency) of objects: components connected to a group can access the latest version of any object. Since objects are replicated, when it is modified, if an application asks for that object LaCOLLA guarantees that the last version will be provided (even thought all replicas were not consistent and it will require some time to have all of them consistent).

• Execution of tasks: members of a group (or the applications these members use) can submit tasks to be executed using computational resources belonging (or available) to the group.

• Presence: know which components and members are connected to the group.

• Location transparency: applications don't have to know the location (IP address) of objects or members. LaCOLLA resolves them internally (similar to domain name services like DNS).

• Instant messaging: send a message to a subgroup of members of the group.

• Management of groups and members: add, delete or modify information about members or groups.

• Disconnected mode: allow applications operate offline. During re-connection, the infrastructure automatically propagates the changes.

LaCOLLA project is the a result of the LaCOLLA architecture design in Marques Ph.D. (pdf, gz).

First version of prototype was developed by Marques and Vilajosana during 2004. This implementation is an evolution of code developed by Marques.

LATEST RELEASE (1.0.x)

Download instructions (valid for both Windows and Linux):

• If you don't have ANT installed:

  • Install ANT (see the Windows instructions here)

• If you already have ANT installed, follow the next 2 steps:

(Step 1) Download the latest ZIP file (see the readme) of LaCOLLA from the table bellow. This file contains:

- Initialization files (GAPAS, UAS, UAS, initial members, database files)

- lib/ directory with needed libraries (IMPORTANT: because LaCOLLA is continuously evolving, the JAR of LaCOLLA must be downloaded separately; see the step 2)

- build.xml (for ANT customization, if needed)

- resources/config/log4j.xml (for logging customization, if needed)

(Step 2) Download the latest JAR file (see the readme) from the table bellow, and

2.1 Copy it into the lib directory

2.2 Update the lacolla.jar property in build.xml with the current JAR version:

<property name="lacolla.jar" location="lib/lacolla-1.0.4.jar"/> (put the correct version)

2.3 To execute LaCOLLA, type “ant colla”

• Install a test Application: PUTGO

  Download the PUTGO demo application (see the user manual at Applications > PutGo > user_doc link bellow)

As a ZIP file (go to the Applications > PutGo > zip link bellow)

From the CVS (go to the Applications > CVS link bellow)

Edit the property “lacolla.home” in build.xml to point to your LACOLLA home directory:

<property name="lacolla.home" location="/your/path/to/lacolla"/>

To compile and execute the application, type “ant putgo”

zips	Directory containing the installation files to start using LaCOLLA 1.0.x (platform-independent). Requirements: JDK1.5, ANT
jars	Directory containing java fixes for LaCOLLA 1.0.x.
Applications	Contains applications that work with LaCOLLA 1.0.x PutGo (zip, user doc) CVS of the applications (cvs access readme)
Source	CVS of LaCOLLA 1.0.x (cvs access readme)
Documentation	Contains documentation valid for LaCOLLA 1.0.x For users: General introduction to LaCOLLA and its API (pdf) Installation guide for LaCOLLA 1.0.x (pdf) Common configuration errors (TODO) For application developers: My First Application (pdf) Guide for creating applications (pdf) Common configuration errors (TODO) Current API status Current javadoc(1.0.4) For LaCOLLA developers: Sequence diagrams (TODO)

Top support topics:

• Installation.

• Application development using LaCOLLA Api.

• Bugs

Send an e-mail to : support.lacolla@uoc.edu

In this section we provide useful links to related sites. Moreover we provide useful tools to develop applications using LaCOLLA.

• Eclipse Project Homepage

• EclipseTutorial

• Configuration CVS with clipse

• Concurrent development of LaCOLLA using CVS with Eclipse

2007

• Joan Manuel Marquès, Leandro Navarro, Xavier Vilajosana, Thanasis Daradoumis: LaCOLLA: Middleware for Self-Sufficient Online Collaboration. IEEE Internet Computing, 11 (2). 56-64 (2007)

• Lázaro, D., Marquès J.M. Jorba, J. Decentralized Service Deployement for Collaborative Environments. Proceedings of the first International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems. pp.229-234. April (2007)

2006

• Joan Manuel Marquès, Leandro Navarro: LaCOLLA: A Middleware to Support Self-sufficient Collaborative Groups. Computers and Artificial Intelligence 25(6): 571-595. (2006)

2005

• Marquès J.M., Navarro, L. (2005). Autonomous and Self-Sufficient Groups: Ad Hoc Collaborative Environments. H. Fucks, S. Lukosch, and A.C. Slagado (Eds.): CRIWG 2005, LNCS 3706, pp. 57-72, 2005. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.

2004

• Marquès J.M., Navarro L., Daradoumis, A. (2004). Extending the Scope of Asynchronous Collaboration: a Matter of Being Autonomous and Self-sufficient (ps) (pdf). 2nd International Workshop on Distributed and Mobile Collaboration (DMC 2004).13th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructures for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE-2004). June 14-16, 2004. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. ISBN: 0-7695-2183-5. ISSN: 1524-4547. pp 87-92. 2004.

• Marquès J.M., Navarro, L., Vilajosana, X., Ribes, T. (2004). Autonomous and Self-sufficient Groups: The Next Step on Collaborative Environments. XII Jornadas de Concurrencia y Sistemas Distribuidos. June 9 - 11, 2004. Las Navas del Marques.

2003

• Marquès J.M. (2003). LaCOLLA: una infraestructura autònoma i autoorganitzada per facilitar la col·laboració PhD Thesis. Computer Architecture Department. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. December 2003. Directed by Leandro Navarro.
  (Versión en castellano de la tesis (traducida con un traductor automáico y sin la mayor parte de las figuras) (pdf, gz)

2001

• Marquès J.M., Navarro L. (2.001) WWG: a Wide-Area Infrastructure for Group Work (Slides). Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructures for Collaborative Enterprises (WET ICE 2001). June 20-22 2001 at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts,USA. Published by IEEE Computer Society. ISBN: 0-7695-1269-0. ISSN: 1080-1383. pag. 342-347

• Marquès J.M., Navarro L. (2.001) WWG: a Wide-Area Infrastructure to support groups (Slides).Proceedigns of 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP 2001). September 30 - 3 October 2001 at Boulder, Colorado, USA. ACM Press. ISBN: 1-58113-294-8. pag 179-187.

• Marquès J.M., Navarro L., Daradoumis, A. (2.001) WWG: a Distributed Infrastructure for Learning in Groups (pdf) (Slides). Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2001) The Future - Impact on Engineering and Science Education. October 10-13 2001. Reno. Nevada. IEEE press. IEEE Catalog Number: 01CH37196C. ISBN: 0-7803-6671-9. ISSN: 0190-5848.

Joan Manuel Marquès

Leandro Navarro

Xavier Vilajosana

Daniel Lázaro

Zenon Perise

Jose Carlos Carvajal

Francesc Serracant

Former contributors

Enric Jaen

Albert Cervera

Toni Ribes (execution of tasks)

Cristobal Talavera (instant messaging)

Raúl Juan (monitor)

Àlex Gil (LaCOLLA file system)