Re: SyncML is kind of interesting

[Justin Couch <justin@vlc.com.au>]

serge@baudot.net wrote:

> Up until now, syncing data was unavoidable. 

[snip]

> 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?

A simple answer: Most definitely.

In a previous life, I did a lot of work for this sort of information
collation system etc. We ran everything from PDAs to workstations all
collecting huge amounts of data. Data included Link 11 radar feeds (up
to 1000 individual tracks per second), motion & IR sensors, still and
video cameras, STT from radio feeds and numerous "other" sources of
data. Huge amounts of information going into databases, collated,
sorted, correlated and then analysed. We could use this information on
the PDA to do wireless planning and recon tasks. We would only sync when
needed.

To that project, and many others like it, live information for the small
device would absolutely cripple the system. Thousands of updates a
second on a screen barely big enough to spill a cup of coffee on with
relatively untrained users would be just asking for a nightmare. Syncing
is a very nice way for us to package up a bunch of _meaningful_
information and controlling the flow to the end users so that they don't
get too confused and/or don't recieve appropriate types of information.
I could probably pick at least a handful of other application areas off
the top of my head where this same situation would apply. 

-- 
Justin Couch                                    Author, Java Hacker
http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/               Java 3D FAQ Maintainer
http://www.j3d.org/              J3D.org The Java 3D Community Site
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