Since dataset variations occur between multiple clients and the enterprise information system (EIS) data to which mobile business object (MBO) data is bound, synchronization is required to reconcile differences and bring each client into coherence with the working copy of the EIS data maintained in the consolidated database (CDB), before writing updates back to the EIS.
These terms describe maintaining data consistency:
- Synchronization – synchronize between the CDB and mobile-device applications. Synchronization transactions require a connection. If a mobile device does not have a connection to Unwired Server, synchronization cannot occur until a connection is established. However, data updates are aggregated and synchronized when a connection becomes available.
- Data refresh – also called cache refresh, synchronize between the CDB and an EIS. Because information is held in the CDB, even if the EIS server fails, the device still has read access to the data in the CDB.
- Each client maintains one instance of the data. Similarly, there is only one version of the dataset in the CDB, and only one version in the EIS system.
- Since variations occur between the different clients and the EIS data, synchronization brings each client into coherence with the working copy of the EIS data that is maintained in the CDB.