Abstract: During software development, both before and after release, information may be collected and stored that may provide insight to developers as a generalized service. For example, data from past debugging sessions, source code in various repositories, bug repositories, discussion groups, and various documents may provide relevant information for software developers to fix current problems when this information is coherently matched with the problem. Using various sources, a system may mine the stored data to give the current developer information related to past code development, and reveal why the code changed throughout previous development. Using sophisticated analyses to identify similar code patterns across multiple large software projects, discovering patterns in normal and abnormal uses of particular software interfaces, and employing other mining techniques, a developer may find domain-specific information to facilitate ongoing software development.

Abstract: An automated task centered collaboration technique is described that significantly lowers the technological entry barrier for the development and deployment of a broad class of collaborative applications, which are termed Task Centered Collaboration (TCC) applications. TCC applications facilitate the processing of a large number of work items, or tasks, by people working independently or in small, synchronously collaborating groups. The technique also provides a mechanism for the study of computer mediated communication and human-computer interactions for this class of applications. The technique creates an abstraction applicable to the broad class of TCC applications, which enables the factoring out of significant portions of the application into a common infrastructure.