FLEXIFRAG - A DESIGN PATTERN FOR FLEXIBLE FILE SHARING IN DISTRIBUTEDCOLLABORATIVE APPLICATIONS

The need for flexible file sharing in distributed systems is increasin g in applications such as calendar management, collaborative editing o f documents, collaborative software developments etc. The file sharing policies required in these applications are often very different from the traditional read/write policies. Hence, a flexible way of specify ing and implementing sharing policies on individual files in file syst ems is required. We propose a distributed object-based system model of constructing file systems. The object-based system model is based on a pattern called FlexiFrag. We show how a distributed object-based sys tem and in particular distributed file system can be constructed using the pattern in a flexible way.