Distributed form management

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Abstract
An open architecture for distributed form management is described. The model employs object-orientation in describing organizational units as well as individual users as entities with uniform external interfaces. Each entity is represented by an autonomous user agent which operates on local and migrating forms. The form concept encapsulates data, layout, and rules into a unified object which is the basic unit of presentation, processing, storage, and communication. All functionality of the system appears in rules of form classes and all data in instances of these form classes. This approach applies the techniques of computer supported cooperative work to provide a flexible mechanism for interpersonal, intraoffice, and interoffice procedures. The main challenge is to organize the collaboration without affecting the autonomy of individual user agents. In this respect, the contribution of the model is the mechanism for form migration. The dynamic integration of forms into different agents is solved with the coordinated interchange of form classes. A specific inheritance scheme provides the desired flexibility by separating the interrelated private and public form operations within each agent. The paper first describes the architecture by starting from a single agent and moving progressively towards a set of cooperating agents. Then an agent implementation called PAGES is described, experiences reported, and the open issues discussed. A typical distributed ordering procedure is used as an example throughout the text.

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