VERSION VECTORS BASED SYNCHRONIZATION ENGINE FOR MOBILE DEVICES

摘要

Current synchronization engines are mainly designed to reconcile data repositories between multiple clients and a central server on a star-like topology. A different approach is needed to achieve synchronization on peer-to-peer topologies where any node can be both client and server and updates may happen independently. Version vectors are one solution to the problem, ensuring global convergence of the datasets and providing straightforward conflict detection, while letting applications to control the conflict resolution semantics in their specific domain. In this paper an implementation of a synchronization engine for contact data in mobile devices using version vectors is presented. The engine is capable of optimistically synchronizing databases among many nodes in a peer-to-peer fashion.