Cross-organisation dataspace (COD) - architecture and implementation

With the rapid development of information and communication technologies, the need to share information to improve efficiency in large enterprises is also increasing rapidly. For a large enterprise the information can come from many different sources and in different formats. There is a real requirement to manage the vast amount and diverse sources of data in a convenient and integrated way so that repositories of information can be built up with little additional effort and the information can be easily accessed globally. This paper presents the design and implementation of a prototype, called COD (Cross- Organisation Dataspace), that addresses the above challenges. COD, in the context of an enterprise involving multiple organisations, allows users from different geographical locations to contribute information and to search and access information easily. The information can be contained in many different forms, e.g. text files, reports, drawings and databases.