RE: SyncML is kind of interesting

[serge@baudot.net]

I totally agree that SyncML is very interesting. However, I am a bit dubious as 

to its future success because of the following:



Up until now, syncing data was unavoidable. For various reasons (cost of 

communications, communication infrastructure, ...) consumers have not been able 

to benefit from permanent internet connections and therefore had to 'replicate' 

(e.g. Lotus Notes DB) or 'Sync' (e.g. Palm) live databases with off-line ones 

so that up-to-date information was available while being mobile.



Today however, especially in the mobile/wireless/PDA world, we are at the eve 

of GPRS and other technologies allowing permanent connections to the Internet / 

other networks and therefore have constant access to the sources of information 

we were syncing with originally. The concept of on-line/off-line will no longer 

be. Will synchronisation technology (and standards like SyncML) therefore still 

be required?



Serge BAUDOT

London, UK





On Sat, 10 Mar 2001 09:44:08 -0500 Didier PH Martin <martind@netfolder.com> 

wrote:

>Hi,

>

>You bet it is interesting. Moreover, last year in Dublin (a syncML members

>conference) I saw a demo showing an Erickson phone to sync a contact list

>directly with an HTTP server; both ends where using syncML. And since,

>Erickson, Nokia, IBM starfish and others are behind it, expect that smart

>phones and some PDAs like the Palm to include it.

>

>For people who want to have an overview on it I wrote something in xml.com

>about it:

>http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/12/27/syncml.html

>

><note>

>Also, in some weeks, talvastudio.com will support synchml applications. We

>also expect to put the netfolder spec as a public spec and a concrete

>example of folder synchronization based on netfolder/syncML. So yes indeed,

>I totally agree with Tim, SyncML is very very interesting.

>

>By the way, we are actually looking for Beta testers For the talvastudio.com

>If you want to help the community (because talvastudio.com is free for XML

>developers) and give us some good feedback, drop me an email and I'll send

>to send the link for the sign-in form. But this is the first Beta, thus it

>is unperfect and still lack good documentation (but we are working on it but

>we still need help - so, if you can help - we have a budget for that - feel

>free to email me on this topic)

><note>

>

>cheers

>Didier

>

>-----Original Message-----

>From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com]

>Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2001 1:55 PM

>To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org

>Subject: SyncML is kind of interesting

>

>

> Check out http://www.syncml.org/

>

>There are a lot of heavyweights behind this.  Looks like a

>nice sensibly-designed language, not that I know anything

>about syncing PDAs.

>

>Interestingly, their namespace URI points at a DTD

>(although SyncML messages need not be valid), and yet

>the page at http://www.syncml.org/downloads.html seems like

>strong evidence why something like RDDL is a good idea.

>

>Sadly, they allow WAP's binary-XML representation, although

>it seems obvious that there are better ways to compress XML

>than replacing tags with numbers.  -Tim

>

>

>

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