synchronization web service methodologies or papers
- by Grady Player
I am building a web service (PHP+JSON) to sync with my iphone app. The main goals are:
Backup
Provide a web view for printing / sorting, manipulating.
allow a group sync up and down.
I am aware of the logic problems with all of these items, Ie. if one person deletes something, do you persist this change to other users, collisions, etc.
I am looking for just any book or scholarly work, or even words of wisdom to address common issues.
when to detect changes of data with hashes, vs modified dates, or combination.
how do address consolidation of sequential ID's originating on different client nodes (can be sidestepped in my context, but it would be interesting.)
dealing with collisions (is there a universally safe way to do so?).
general best practices.
how to structure the actual data transaction (ask for whole list then detect changes...)