Scalable Human Blog

What do we mean by collaboration editing?

Real-time collaborative editing apps

• Allows for several people to edit simultaneously
• Example of this?
  • Google Docs
  • Etherpad
• Allows for multiple users to edit docs, spreadsheets etc.

How do we resolve collaborative editing?

Strangely enough collaborative editing has a lot in common with the replication problem in an offline editing use case.

⚙️ Collaboration model equivalent to single leader replicaton with transaction on the leader:

• ✅ When a single user edits a document the changes are instantly applied and then written to there local replica (the state of the doc or client app)
• ✅ After, this is asynchronously replicated to the server and any other users editing the same document
• ⚠️ If you want it to be guaranteed, there needs to be no editing conflicts
  • 🔒 The application must obtain a lock before a user can edit
  • ⛔️ If another user wants to edit the same doc, they will first have to wait, until the first user has submitted there changes and the lock has released

🤔 Alternatively, you may want faster collaboration! 🏃💨

• This can be achieved making smaller units of change
  • For example a single key stroke to avoid locking
    • This approach allows users to edit simultaneously
    • But is also brings all the challenges of multi-leader replication… including conflict resolution

📚 Further Reading & Related Topics

If you’re exploring collaborative editing in distributed data-intensive systems, these related articles will provide deeper insights:

• Distributed Data-Intensive Systems: What Is a Conflict? – Learn how conflicts arise in collaborative editing environments and how distributed systems handle concurrent data changes.

• Distributed Data-Intensive Systems: Limitations of Quorum Consistency – Explore how quorum-based approaches in collaborative editing systems impact consistency and availability.