The Mobile Developer

SyncML: Standardizing Data Synchronization

It used to be common for data to be stored in a central location. Now it's more likely to be distributed among several different datastores -- enterprise database servers, email clients/servers, handheld organizers, cellphones, and so on. Some of that data is shareable, even though it may be stored in different formats. In an ideal world, for example, your email client, organizer and cellphone would all share the same address book -- update one and the others get updated automatically.

The process of updating multiple copies of data is usually referred to as a data synchronization. Data synchronization is not new technology: devices like Palm organizers and BlackBerry pagers already synchronize their on-board applications with popular desktop applications. And database vendors provide ways to keep local and remote copies of databases synchronized. But there are two main problems with data sychronization: it's complicated and it's proprietary.

Data synchronization is complex because shared data doesn't necessarily exist in the same format across multiple datastores and because of the need for conflict resolution -- the ability to handle multiple conflicting changes to the same data. This complexity is not likely to disappear any time soon, although there are plenty of companies out there that will sell you tools to help you overcome this complexity. (Shameless plug: check out my employer's MobiLink technology for relational database synchronization.)

The proprietary nature of data synchronization is about to change, however, with the introduction of SyncML. SyncML (see the website at www.syncml.org) is an XML language for data synchronization. (SyncML is an abbreviation for Synchronization Markup Language.) It's still in the formative stages, but its goal is to deliver a standard synchronization protocol that applications can use to share data. The protocol is being designed specifically with mobile and wireless devices in mind.

Is SyncML likely to succeed? Probably, given the list of initial founders: IBM/Lotus, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Psion and Starfish. A long list of smaller companies have just signed on as supporters of the initiative, and expect more to join in fairly short time, because the popularity of mobile devices is making data synchronization an important issue to address. SyncML is expecting to publish its first specification in the middle of this year, so there's very little to comment on as of yet, but it's certainly something you should be tracking.