News

Big Blue Announces Java Framework for Data Replication, Synchronization

• By Kathleen Ohlson
• October 11, 2005

IBM recently introduced a Java library for developers to create collaborative, mitigation and multi-device applications.

Fluid Sync is a Java framework that takes a different approach to data replication and synchronization. It allows applications to become fluid in the sense that a running application is spread to a new device in real time. With Fluid Sync, each device has a copy of the app and a replica of the application state that real-time synchronization keeps consistently. These replicas are weakly consistent, allowing Fluid Sync to cope with intermittent connectivity. Consistency is proportional to network connectivity.

A new instance is created with the same application state. When developers make changes to the original app, these changes are immediately visible in the new instance. When an instance is disconnected from the network, a full copy of the application data is still available. Developers can continue interacting with the application. Any changes are reconciled with other instances when the app reconnects to the network.

Fluid Sync allows developers to collaborate on a shared document in either synchronous or asynchronous models without switching the application. The framework temporarily couples several device applications, such as mobile and stationary, to act as a single app. Applications on mobile devices can exploit full or intermittent connectivity or work in disconnected operation seamlessly.

Fluid Sync is part of IBM’s Emerging Technologies Toolkit, a software development kit for designing, developing and executing emerging autonomic and Web service technologies.