Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Edward Eric Thomas

Stephen D Flanagin

Lev Novik

Ashish B Shah

Neil Leonard Padgett

Darshatkumar A Shah

Muhunthan Sivapragasam

Salome Jacob

Kevin R Hughes

Lei Tang

Conflicts detected during synchronization of replicas are enumerated and resolved according to a specified policy, comprising conditions and actions or simply a specified action. Specified actions may be drawn from a set of standard actions and custom actions may also be composed. The conflicts are enumerated and resolved in logical groups. A logical group is a collection of one or more item envelopes, each comprising entities, such as items, links, and/or extensions. In an example configuration, both constraint-based conflicts, such as a name collision, and non-constraint-based conflicts are handled via the same application programming interface.

Unified mechanism for presenting and resolving grouped synchronization conflicts

A data store in which changes are not tracked is synchronized with a data store in which changes are tracked utilizing a shadow store. The shadow store contains shadow data indicative of the most recent synchronization operation between the data stores. The shadow data comprises hash values of the data items in the limited or non-change-tracked data store. Changes to data items in the limited or non-change-tracked data store are operated on to provide respective hash values. The hash values are compared with the hash values in the shadow data. If the hash values differ, changes are appropriately applied to the data store, and the shadow data is appropriately updated. In an example embodiment, hash values are obtained from one-way hash functions, such MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, or the like.

Synchronization of change-tracked data store with data store having limited or no change tracking

A method and system for synchronization of data stores is described. A synchronization initiator sends a sync key to a synchronization partner requesting to synchronize to some checkpoint. An integer is used as the sync key. When the sent sync key is zero the synchronization partner performs an initial synchronization. When the sent sync key is a value other than zero, the synchronization partner attempts to synchronize to the desired state. The value of the sync key is incremented only upon successful synchronization. A sync server can also include a sync key with change update notifications sent to a sync client, which the client can use to determine if the update notification is a valid update from the current sync state or is a delayed and obsolete update that should be discarded.

Method and system for using a sync key

A method and system for processing notifications is described. Notifications are tagged based on a synchronization state between the sender and receiver of the notification. The receiver processes the tagged notification based on a comparison between the tagged value and the current state of its synchronization with respect to the sender of the notification. When the tagged value is current with respect to the current synchronization value and a synchronization is not in process, the notification is processed. When the tagged value is stale with respect to the current synchronization state the notification is discarded. If the notification is out-of-date with respect to the current state of synchronization the notification may be queued for later processing or discarded.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Edward Eric Thomas