Online document services
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Technology is analogous to a coin, it has two faces to it. Every little technology has a major story to tell us about its advantages and disadvantages. Especially in this era of innovation, witnessing advancements in technology have become as common as witnessing the sun rise everyday morning. What was popular yesterday is obsolete today and what is popular today will be obsolete tomorrow.
Web-based applications
Web-based application is one such technology that is taken the Internet with storm. Web-based applications are programs that run on Web servers and use Web pages as the user interface. These applications can be accessed at the same time my multiple-users. They use HTTP as its primary communications protocol and delivers web-based information in HTML
Examples of Web-based applications
* Online Maps
* Online Banking
* Instant Messaging
* Online Reservation
* Online Document Services and many more …
These applications are most commonly used in the day-day life of many internet users.
Principle of Online Document Service
Online document Service is made possible to the end-user based on the principle of cloud computing. Cloud Computing is a computing paradigm in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network. The combination of network connections, software and services is called the cloud. Users connect to the cloud as and when they require the resource i.e the application they require. This is made possible by a large-scale distributive computing and server virtualization software's.
Cloud computing can be visualized as a networked computer system that harnesses the resources of several servers to complete tasks and store data. The user has to run the cloud computing system’s interface software, which can be as simple as a web-browser. The responsibility of storage and processing data falls to the network cloud and not on the individual user. This decreases user’s hardware and software requirements. Hence in the cloud computing, the network is referred to as the super-computer.
What is online document service?
Online document service (ODS) offers the user with the ability to store, read, write and share their word documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. These documents are available anywhere and anytime to the user where he/she can access Internet.
Online document services act as collaborative tools, much like the way Wiki's do. But it is important to understand that both of them deserve a separate categorization, beyond their both being services in convergence of communications. Some of the points of distinction are:
- The main principle behind ODS is not authorship.
- An ODS involves editing contents of a document as opposed to editing the contents of a website.
- The primary purpose of an ODS is not to act as a knowledge repository or an encyclopaedia.
- An ODS has moderated collaboration.
Advantages of Online Document Service
Online document service have the following advantages when compared to the already available off-line document service providers (products):
- No software installation
- Operating System independent
- No ongoing or upfront expenses
- No up-grading(software) hazels
- No special hardware requirements
- Concurrent editing
- Ease of sharing
Online Document Service Providers
History
Oct, 2003 A small company in Cupertino, created ThinkFree, an office suite that is tightly linked with an online file storage service called CyberdrivePlus.
Jun, 2005 Adobe made its name on the Web by created a Web-based word processor application that called Buzzword.
Aug, 2005 Upstartle, a software company launched Writely, a web-based word processor.
Sep, 2005 AdventNet, a company focusing on building affordable software for businesses, launched Zoho.
Mar, 2006 Google announced that it had acquired Upstartle.
Jun, 2006 Google launched Spreadsheets.
Feb, 2007 Google Docs was made available to Google Apps users.
Mar, 2008 Zoho announced that Zoho Writer supports both online and offline access from Internet Explorer Mobile (IE Mobile).
Features
- Users can create, import and export documents.
- Users can publish their work as a webpage.
- Users can share and edit documents by inviting collaborators.
- The web-application keeps a record of recent changes made to a document by collaborators.
- The changes made to the document are visible in real-time.
- Owner can exercise access control by assigning permissions to collaborators.
Comparison of Features [1]
| Features | Zoho | Google Docs | ThinkFree Online | Adobe Buzzword |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1GB of storage | Unlimited Storage | 1GB of storage | Unlimited Storage | |
| 10MB | 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image | 4MB | 10MB | |
| Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations | Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations | Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations | Docs | |
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 19 | 11 | 134 | 7 | |
| Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Yes, only Roman alphabets | Yes, only Roman alphabets | Yes, Roman, Chinese, Japanese and Korean alphabets | No | |
| Ajax | Ajax | Java, Ajax | Flash | |
| Yes | No | Yes | No | |
| No | No | Yes | Yes |
Version control
Most of the times when you are editing a document, it goes through various revisions over a period of time. What if after numerous edits and saves, one day your mind reverts and you want to go back to the older version. Version control saves you the hassle of going back to square one and having to rewrite it all over again.
Version Control is an integral part of ODS. Changes to each document are usually identified by incrementing an associated number, called the revision number. Either simply increment numbers for each edit (v1,v2,v3, etc.) or denote major/minor revision number ((v1_0, v1_1, v1_2, v1_3, v2_0, etc.) or include dates ((v2008-07-01, v2008-07-14, etc. )
There are various version control methods : SCCS( source code control system), RCS(revision control system), CVS(concurrent versions system) , SVN(subversion), Perforce etc.
Each ODS has its own version control method. For example, Perforce is the version control system in use at Google.
Disadvantages
Though online document service provides users with rich experience and advantages, there are certain limitations users come across
- File size restriction
- Total dependency on network connection
- Poorly developed import/export features
- Not advisable for top-secret or proprietary files
Future Development
We can anticipate the following enhancements to be available to the online document service users
- Support for international characters such as Chinese, Japanese and so on.
- Support for various mobile platform.
- Support for more document types, such as Visio.
- Support for Speech recognition.
Competition