Synchronization puzzle.

Alex Tweedly alex at tweedly.net
Tue Nov 8 16:58:16 EST 2005


Dave LeYanna wrote:

> Alex;
>
> I was searching the archives looking for some information about a PIM 
> lib or stack that may be available and noticed your post about 
> syncronization issues you were looking at. Did you ever finish that 
> addressbook app? would you be interested in sharing or selling it?
>
No, I didn't "finish" it. But I (and the rest of my family) now use it 
as *our* shared addressbook. It's a long way from finished - somewhere I 
have a long list of things that need done before I can "release" it, but 
it already does enough to be more useful (in my unusual circumstances) 
than any other addressbook I've ever found, so I'm using it happily and 
the other improvements are low priority.  The initial posting about it 
received only one (slightly discouraging) reply, so I never did get 
around to posting the stack anywhere.

> We need to develop a PIM and an address book is part of such an 
> application.
>
> We probally will be using PostgreSQL on a server with SQLLite on the 
> desktops that will need to sync once connected to the network or via 
> the internet.

The synchronization scheme I have may be overkill - multiple people 
independently and asynchronously (off-line) editing a fully shared 
addressbook or calendar, and may also be inadequate in other ways (it is 
a single shared addressbook/calendar, with no mechanism to have separate 
views or to sync or co-ordinate between such multiple data sets).  So 
I'd recommend a careful look over the "synchronization spec" part of my 
earlier email to make sure it is suitable for you.

I have currently only implemented the "shared file system" sync method - 
though I did use the basic technique in another app where I implemented 
the server/client method (not in Rev), so I feel comfortable that it 
works and saves bandwidth. It should extend easily to PostgreSQL - an 
initial query to retrieve the control fields for all records, with 
subsequent retrieves of the rest of the data only for the updated records.

I'll clean it up, remove my own data :-) and put the stack up on 
revonline tonight. The stack carries many footprints of the fact that I 
initially intended to make it a single "PIM" - and later changed my mind 
and did separate addressbook and calendar apps. For instance, right now 
there is a "tabbed notebook" with only the single tab for addressbook.

btw - I'm not interested in selling it, but if you find it useful and 
use any (enough) ideas from it (esp the sync scheme which afaik is 
novel), I'd appreciate a mention in the credits/footnotes.




-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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