An attribute corresponds to a column in a table. A synchronization parameter maps to an attribute that acts as a filter or variable that lets you limit the data that is returned to the device to rows in the table based on a supplied value.
Specifying a synchronization parameter during mobile business object (MBO) development allows you to control the amount and type of data that is downloaded from the CDB to the device during synchronization. Without synchronization parameters, large amounts of unnecessary data may be downloaded to devices from the CDB, making viewing difficult and needlessly expending resources, such as device battery life, memory, and network bandwidth.
For example, if a table has a "country" column, a user can supply "USA" as the value in his or her synchronization request. Unwired Server filters and returns only the rows that meets the specified criteria.
- The user initiates a synchronization request that includes an attribute value (synchronization parameter).
- Unwired Server filters the data in the CDB. For example, if the attribute is "country" and the user supplied the value "USA," only rows that contain "USA" are returned to the device.
If the user later supplies the value "Europe", rows for both "USA" and "Europe" are returned to the device, and so on.
- Unwired Server synchronizes the device with the results.