Organizations worldwide are continually challenged to deliver their latest data to an audience of mobile workers, remote users, multiple sites and customers all over the globe. SyncDeK is elegantly simple for users yet is built on powerful technology that enables real people to deploy distributed data sharing applications to anyone, anywhere in the world without having to write a line of code. SyncDeK provides the solution that offers data replication capabilities "for the rest of us."

What Is SyncDeK?

SyncDeK performs data replication and data transmission services between structured databases, including FileMaker, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server and Access, among others. The SyncDeK Developer tool allows you to configure how and to whom data will be shared amongst distributed data sources. Customers around the world use SyncDeK to extend databases to mobile users and remote sites; update off-site web servers; integrate data between various types of databases and to enable continuous backup for their mission critical systems.

How Can You Benefit From SyncDeK?

SyncDeK's unique, patented architecture efficiently keeps an unlimited number of database copies (nodes) in sync and allows these nodes to be comprised of any combination of mobile users and servers that can connect and disconnect from the network as needed. Because replication instructions are encrypted and compressed, data transmission is both fast and secure, thereby providing added protection for your mission-critical data, as well as an efficient means to deliver fast data access to users and partners wherever they are in the World.

How Does It Work?

At its core, SyncDeK is a background service that runs next to each copy of a FileMaker database that you distribute. Each of these SyncDeK Engines executes four key steps each time it performs a sync cycle. The descriptions below provide a very brief overview of each of these steps:

First, the SyncDeK Engine uses JDBC to query the local database to collect changes that have occurred since the last cycle. These collected records are processed into replication instructions and packaged into encrypted and compressed locally stored files.

Second, the SyncDeK Engine connects to a SyncDeK Server to upload the replication instructions for further processing and eventual distribution to other computers that share the database. SyncDeK Server is a background service installed on one computer within the network, or on an Internet Service Provider, such as dbDom.com. SyncDeK Server performs conflict detection and resolution as well as data distribution services.

Third, the SyncDeK Engine again connects to a SyncDeK Server, but this time to download replication instruction files that have been sent by other computers in the sharing community, and processed by SyncDeK Server for conflict resolution.

Finally, the SyncDeK Engine unpacks the downloaded replication instruction files and again uses JDBC to push the contents into corresponding local databases.

Each of these steps operates essentially independently of the others, and thereby has its own conditions of successful completion. In other words, there is a great deal of fault tolerance built into SyncDeK to cope with unexpected failures such as dropped Internet connections, database crashes or simply if a user chooses to close their computer and leave the coffee shop before a sync cycle completes. Additionally, a detail log of process activity is maintained at each node. This log is stored in XML format and is uploaded to SyncDeK Server at the end of each sync cycle. This provides a means for centralized monitoring of synchronization activity.

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