The Event Heap: a coordination infrastructure for interactive workspaces

Abstract

Coordinating the interactions of applications running on the diversity of both mobile and embedded devices that will be common in ubiquitous computing environments is still a difficult and not completely solved problem. We look at one such environment, an interactive workspace, where groups come together to collaborate on solving problems. Such a space will contain a heterogeneous collection of both new and legacy applications and devices. We propose the Event Heap, a coordination model most similar to tuplespaces, as being appropriate for such environments. We also present a prototype implementation of the Event Heap, and show that the system has performed well in actual use over the last two years in our prototype interactive workspace, the iRoom.