What is synchronization?
As computer users we constantly talk about synchronizing data…. But what is it? The American Heritage Dictionary defines “synchronization” as: “To arrange (historical events) so as to indicate parallel occurrence.” In the simplest of terms, it means that we want data on one computer to appear on another computer. But it’s a lot more complicated than that…..
The complexity of the issue comes from the source of the data, who has permission to modify it, who has permission to see it, and how the “synchronization engine” manages the dynamic data.
XC Connect resolves the issue regarding the source of the data by providing “connectors” to various applications (such as Outlook, Entourage, Address Book/iCal, Evolution, Word Perfect Mail, etc) and presenting the data that is available from the application to the XC Connect “server” (the XCN Server).
When receiving data from the XCN Server, the connectors’ purpose is simply to apply the data in the context of the application when data is received from the software server. If the application has created, modified, or deleted data, the “connector”wraps the data object into an encrypted xml blob and sends it to the software server.
As a result, the software server has no need to “understand” the data as it is simply passed along to other client connectors as needed, thereby eliminating any possibility of data loss during synchronization. Data transfer is secure and access to the data is based upon a permissions model.
XC Connect manages the issues of who has permission to change it, view, or delete, with a very efficient permissions structure that manages the record object along with the permission structure of the user.
Since data can be very dynamic, changes are reconciled very simply: the user that made the most current modification wins. In a more complicated data reconciliation model, when a data conflict (change) is found, affected users could be given the opportunity to decide whose change should take precedence. However, use cases have shown that users are not at all interested in being constantly bothered with reconciliation – it’s almost as if they would rather gripe about the fact that an appointment was changed than having been advised about it by the software.