Computer Science
LiteDoc: Make Collaborative Editing Fast, Scalable, and Robust
Document Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Collaborative text editing applications like Google docs, Etherpad and Overleaf allow users to concurrently edit a 'shared' document. Existing collaborative text editors use either a centralized sever or some form of Paxos-like consensus algorithm to achieve total order on the updates. The editor then uses computationally intensive methods like operational transformation (OT) and differential synchronization (diff-sync) to apply the ordered update events at each client. Unfortunately, these methods often result in huge metadata overhead, are difficult to implement and result in conflicts due to users writing to the same location. With LiteDoc, we propose a different approach to tackle this problem: we make collaborative editing fast, scalable and robust by providing simplified semantics. More importantly, we can formally prove that LiteDoc achieves deterministic guarantees of correctness. LiteDoc divides the shared document into several sections and allow only one user to write at a particular section at any given time. This removes all conflicts that arise from having multiple writers writing to the same location. This mechanism also obviates the task of implementing cumbersome modules for OT, diff-sync and rollbacks in case of conflicts. Note that while LiteDoc supports less features than general collaborative editors like Google docs, it is natural (and courteous) to avoid concurrent writing to the same location when multiple people collaborate.
Publication Title
2020 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, PerCom Workshops 2020
Publication Date
2020
ISBN
9781728147161
DOI
10.1109/PerComWorkshops48775.2020.9156221
Keywords
asynchrony, atomicity, collaborative editor, correctness, register, system architecture
Repository Citation
Kumar, Saptaparni; Pan, Haochen; Wang, Roger; and Tseng, Lewis, "LiteDoc: Make Collaborative Editing Fast, Scalable, and Robust" (2020). Computer Science. 126.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_computer_sciences/126
APA Citation
Kumar, S., Pan, H., Wang, R., & Tseng, L. (2020, March). Litedoc: Make collaborative editing fast, scalable, and robust. In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerCom Workshops) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.