Title: "Sync: A Java Framework for Mobile Collaborative Applications"

Abstract:

Sync is a new Java-based framework for developing collaborative applications
for wireless mobile systems. Sync is based on object-oriented replication and 
offers high-level synchronization-aware classes based on existing Java 
classes, with which programmers may construct arbitrarily complex objects. 
Programmers may also extend the Sync-provided classes to create new 
replicated classes, either to add functionality or to modify a class's merge 
policy. Our framework supports fully disconnected operation and employs 
centralized, asynchronous synchronization. Application programmers use the 
Sync framework to define conflicts and specify conflict resolution on the 
basis of the application's structure and semantics. Sync permits a range of 
consistency guarantees to be defined, including support for atomic commit of 
multiple updates. Sync is designed for wireless networks in that it enables 
applications to share changes at granularity as small as updates to basic 
types such as integers, and so enables better performance on low-bandwidth 
connections.

We motivate our work with a general discussion of the needs of wireless 
mobile applications, and then give a set of specific requirements that 
frameworks for such applications should fulfill. We then present the Sync 
framework, motivating each feature with its use in an example application. 
We discuss the basic Sync architecture, its programming model, and its 
synchronization model. Finally we present our conclusions and our thoughts 
for future directions of this research.

Bio:

Jonathan Munson is a Visiting Research Instructor in the Computer
Science department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
His research interests are in collaborative systems, applications for
mobile systems, and replicated systems.  He received a BA from Hope
College, a MS in mechanical engineering from the University of
Michigan, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of North
Carolina in 1997.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill   E-mail: munson@cs.unc.edu
Department of Computer Science                Phone:  (919) 962-1782
C.B. 3175, Sitterson Hall                     Fax:    (919) 962-1799
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175                    http://www.cs.unc.edu/~munson