Replicated concurrency control for collaborative feature modelling: A fine granular approach

Abstract

It is still an open challenge to realize a fine granular concurrency control in a cooperative design (co-design) environment in a fully replicated manner. The fine-grain concurrency control enables multiple users to manipulate well-partitioned portions of a shared product model as opposed to the entire one, where a high degree of operational parallelism is achieved to maximize concurrent collaborations in a natural modelling way. This paper proposes a feature granularity concurrency control approach for the collaborative feature modelling, which supports simultaneous design operations in replicated co-design systems. Firstly, a decentralized mutual exclusion agreement on a single object is extended to a replicated concurrency control mechanism supporting multiple mutually excluded objects. Secondly, a feature granularity concurrency control approach is devised for replicated co-design systems to ensure the consistency of replicated models after concurrent manipulations. Finally, the proposed approach is realized in a real-time co-design environment consisting of multiple heterogeneous computer-aided design (CAD) systems, which proves the feasibility of the approach in the industrial implementation. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.