Data Synchronization in a Network-Volatile Mobile Ecosystem

Abstract

Today, it is a major issue for mobile applications to maintain a replica state of the server on mobile devices. This creates the need to keep data on both the server and the mobile. In such cases, when the data changes on the server, the new state of the data has to be updated on the mobile in order to maintain a consistent view of the data flow. However, mobile devices communicate over wireless mediums (.e.g., Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3.5G/4G, etc.) which can experience intermittent connectivity. The volatility of the network is also influenced by low-bandwidth. The direct effects of these issues are high latency and inconsistency issues between the data on the mobile clients and the remote servers. In this work, I present a detail review on the topic of data synchronization in mobile networks. Then, a generic architecture called MobiQ is proposed which can keep working in an offline mode to record local modifications and can synchronize with the remote servers when connectivity is restored. This is achieved through the proposal of an efficient synchronization protocol which combines different synchronization and replication strategies. Moreover, the MobiQ framework provides a secured environment to work with data. The implemented architecture is designed and tested in mobile questionnaire system and the result is encouraging.