For the JavaLand x Women in Tech series, Ixchel Ruiz has interviewed female speakers of the upcoming JavaLand 2026 at Europa-Park. These speaker spotlights give you the opportunity to get to know the speaker better and get their valuable input and insight on current topics. You can find more background information regarding the Women in Tech movement as well as Ixchel's motivation behind it in our previous article.
Session Title:Building a real-time collaborative editor
Time: Wednesday, 11.03.2026 | 12:00 – 12:40
Room: Das Studio
Language: English
Focus: Architecture, Security, Distributed Systems
A Key Question for Developers: Enabling Secure, Offline Real-Time Collaboration
Collaborative editing tools feel almost effortless today. Multiple people type at the same time, changes appear instantly, and conflicts are handled quietly in the background. Tools like Google Docs have made this experience feel normal.
But what happens when that same capability is required in a highly restricted environment? What if the system must work securely, without internet access, and under strict performance and quality constraints?
This session starts with exactly that challenge and explores what it really takes to build a real-time collaborative editor from the ground up.
Meet the Speaker
Dr. Mihaela Gheorghe-Roman is an experienced software architect with a PhD in Informatics, an Oracle ACE Associate (Java), and a university associate lecturer. With a background that combines deep academic knowledge and hands-on industry experience, her work focuses on building complex systems that meet demanding requirements for security, performance, and reliability.
Her perspective brings together research-level understanding and real-world constraints, which is essential for tackling problems where architecture decisions have long-lasting consequences.
Why this matters at JavaLand
Developing Secure, High-Performance Collaborative Systems for Air-Gapped, Mission-Critical Environments
The motivation for this session comes from a real-world use case with very specific constraints. During the planning phase of a military operation, multiple documents must be edited at the same time by multiple users. At the same time, the system must operate in air-gapped environments, where connectivity to external networks is not possible.
This combination of requirements rules out many off-the-shelf solutions. Security, performance, and quality are not optional. They are foundational. The session walks through how an embedded solution was designed to meet these needs and what challenges emerged along the way.
For developers and architects, this talk offers insight into what changes when collaborative systems are built for environments where failure or compromise is not acceptable.
The One Idea to Take Home
The key message of the session is that real-time collaborative editing is possible even under strict security constraints, but it requires careful design.
The talk explains how advanced operational transformation algorithms allow multiple users to edit the same document simultaneously without conflicts. It also shows how these algorithms can be implemented securely in air-gapped deployments, without relying on external services.
Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the architectural trade-offs involved and practical strategies for building high-performance collaborative systems that do not compromise on security.
From Algorithms to Architecture
A central part of the session focuses on the technical building blocks behind the solution. This includes how operational transformation works in practice, how conflicts are resolved in real time, and how performance is maintained as the number of users grows.
The talk also covers the integration of Angular and Java, showing how frontend and backend components work together to support collaborative editing in constrained environments. Rather than staying theoretical, the session shares concrete challenges encountered during development and how each was addressed.
Join the Conversation
This session invites you to look beyond familiar tools and explore what happens when collaborative editing must meet the highest standards of security and reliability.
If you are interested in distributed systems, real-time collaboration, or building software for constrained environments, this talk will offer both technical depth and practical insight. Bring your questions and your curiosity to JavaLand 2026 and join the conversation.
This article’s grammar and syntax were refined using ChatGPT and DeepL. The content reflects the speaker’s ideas, hopes, and statements.
