A programming framework for mobilizing enterprise applications

Abstract

Mobile applications often need to synchronize their data with backend servers. Synchronization semantics have typically been set at the level of backend datastores. This is a major hindrance for enterprise applications that cannot assume a uniform storage model. In this paper, we present the SodaSync framework that provides a generic synchronization model for mobile enterprise applications that use heterogeneous backend stores. SodaSync exploits a unifying higher-level data model of Service Data Objects (SDO) and introduces a persistence and synchronization framework for the model. It allows application programmers to express data and consistency requirements in terms of the SDO model and thereby emancipates them from the replication nuances of various backend stores. We present the major features of SodaSync, its architecture, and the status of our implementation. © 2004 IEEE.