Again about synchronization

Once I wrote a post about synchronization in Android on this blog. Although that post is rather obsolete now because the synchronization-related Android API changed a lot, old sins did come back to haunt me. Rushang Shah from CompanionLink Software wrote a kind letter to me because of that old blog entry asking my opinion about their Android-based synchronization solution.

Disclaimer: Although I have no relationship whatsoever with CompanionLink, I do advertise their product now because of that nice letter. :-)

The product is an Android-based synchronization solution for PIM and CRM data. Try it, it is a great product but I use it as a pretext to emphasize again my mania about synchronization as a key mobile enabler. I have already written a post about it, there is also a more detailed paper involved there. My claim is that synchronization should not be considered as part of PIM or CRM systems, it is a general enabler because mobility inherently requires disconnected operation due to varying network conditions. Therefore my dream synchronization solution is not restricted to predefined data types but can be used as a building block in any application.

In order to demonstrate my point, here is a larger Android client-Java server application I wrote some time back. The application itself probably cannot be executed on the latest Android platform because the API changed since and I was lazy to bring up the application to the latest API. It does demonstrate, however, that synchronization needs can be identified in any mobile application, for any type of mobile data.

So Rushang, if you listen to me, you turn your product into a general-purpose synchronization component.