One of the simpler, but surprisingly common, needs for data synchronization involves sending changes from a server to any number of client devices. In these scenarios, the clients are read-only in terms of the data they’re syncing, and every client is syncing generally the same data set.

An example of this scenario would be a project I worked on that helped users locate campground location on their smartphone. The application itself needed to operate offline, and thusly needed to keep a local copy of the data on the phone itself, but as new campgrounds were added, and existing updated, the application was expected to pick up these changes. The smartphone app itself only consumed these records, and never updated them. For example, a user could view a search for and view a campground list, but couldn’t edit the campground’s posted hours of operation – that was a task rightfully reserved for the company operating this campground listing service. Additionally, all users of the application received the same dataset as there were no roles or permissions in this regard.

It is my experience that the most common use cases for data synchronization, and how many people initially stumble upon this problem domain, is by way of needing a mobile application. Due to more relaxed technical needs, this scenario even affords me the ability to take the easier path of simply replacing the entire dataset on a regular interval or on an as-needed basis. While not truly data synchronization, in my opinion, I’d be remiss if we didn’t spend at least a little bit of time discussing this path as it is a rather common solution.