Clay: synchronous collaborative interactive environment
Michael E. Locasto, Michael Hulme, Ryan Gladysiweicz, Justin Tracy, Ursula Wolz · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2002
Clay is an architecture that allows content developers simultaneous, real-time editing access to the same documents. It encourages developers to work together in a collaborative environment and provides guidelines for enforcing logical constraints on developer interaction. Clay is constructed of an extremely diverse set of technologies, with Java acting as a common platform and a transportation mechanism (RMI). This allows us to concentrate on defining the high-level interaction of the clients rather than low-level protocols.The Clay software grew out of the need to provide a team of physically dispersed software developers with the ability to work cohesively on various coding projects. This initial goal provides the motivation for Clay's strong incorporation of traditional solutions (chat, bulletin boards, email, and whiteboard) to problems facing current software collaboration efforts. However, the Clay model has always kept in mind the objective for any type of document to be the focus of collaboration. As a consequence, the Clay architecture is highly extensible and distinctly flexible.