Abstract: A collaborative platform may facilitate the development and deployment of a collaborative environment. New or existing applications may be layered with the collaborative platform on various local environments to create a collaborative environment among multiple participants. A data-centric abstraction may be used to abstract collaborative objects from individual applications. In some embodiments, the collaborative environment may span different participants, applications, networks, devices and platforms to provide real-time collaboration.

Abstract: In a collaborative environment a collaborative platform for each participant may include a collaborative data resource representation for each collaborative data resource used in that collaborative environment. For each collaborative data resource, one of the participants' collaborative platform may be the host or server for that collaborative data resource. The collaborative data resource representation managed by the host collaborative platform is referred to as the server data representation. Every other participants' collaborative platform may manage a client data representation of that collaborative data resource. When an application makes a change to a collaborative data resource, the change is made for the server data representation and then the collaborative platform managing the server data representation sends state information to each client data representation of that collaborative data resource to reflect the change made to the server data representation.

Abstract: A collaborative platform may provide for mutability regarding the type characteristic (server or client) of a representation of a collaborative resource within the collaborative platform. A collaborative resource may be hosted by one participant's collaborative platform (as a server data representation) and reflected in each other participant collaborative platform (as a client data representation). Mutability allows the collaborative resource to be dynamically re-hosted from one participant to another. Mutability provided by the collaborative platforms allows the server data representation on one system to become a client data representation, and a client data representation on another system to become the server data representation. Mutability may provide for load balancing and/or transparent fail over protection within the collaborative environment.

Abstract: A technique for manipulating computer-implemented objects uses a Command-Behavior technique to separate Behaviors, which perform actions on the object, from Commands, which cause the Behaviors to be invoked. A dynamic mapping of Commands to Behaviors allows the system to change which Behavior is invoked by a Command. Objects in the system can have Shadows, the Shadows and the object communicating with each other. The technique allows objects and their Shadows to transparently reside anywhere in a distributed network of servers, using any available network protocol for communication.