Re: [coldsync-hackers] Design logic of Sync conduits

[Christophe Beauregard <christophe dot beauregard at sympatico.ca>]

On Tuesday 24 February 2004 14:22, Marco van Beek wrote:

> The only way I can see a multiuser system working without being a
> complete nightmare is to use a field which is identical across all
> devices & databases.

What about letting the Handheld assign its own record id and the Server use 
its SQL ids, and then, for each Handheld, have a SQL table containing 
(Database,hhID,sID), where Database is the name of the Handheld database 
(DatebookDB, etc), hhID is the handheld record ID for that database, and 
sID is the server record ID (which might be database specific or it could 
be a global ID).

That buys you a bunch of things.

First, you never have to worry about new Handhelds breaking. Even if you can 
assign record ids now, you might not be able to with PalmOS 6/7/8/etc. 
Also, what happens when a new user plugs in a Handheld with a lastUniqueID 
higher than the range your currently using? How do you push records to it 
then?

Second, the server record ID doesn't need to be tied to a particular range 
of ids or the PalmOS defined database/table arrangement. For example, you 
could combine a Todo list and a Calendar into a single SQL table, something 
you can't do with your current 1 to 1 SQL database/Palm database mapping. 
Or you could break the Address database into multiple separate databases, 
such as Customers, Staff, and Suppliers.

I'm sure you can think of further possibilities.

c.
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