MobiLink Synchronization User's Guide
The Contact Sample Application
This chapter introduces you to the Contact sample application. This sample is a valuable resource for the MobiLink developer. It provides you with an example of how to implement many of the techniques you will need to develop MobiLink applications.
The Contact sample application includes an Adaptive Server Anywhere consolidated database and two Adaptive Server Anywhere remote databases. It illustrates several common synchronization techniques. To get the most out of this example, you should study the sample application as you read.
Although the consolidated database is an Adaptive Server Anywhere database, the synchronization scripts consist of simple SQL statements that should work with minimal changes on other database management systems.
The Contact sample is in the Samples\MobiLink\Contact subdirectory of your SQL Anywhere installation. For an overview, see Samples\MobiLink\Contact\readme.txt.
The synchronization design in the Contact sample application uses the following features:
Column subsets A subset of the columns of the Customer, Product, SalesRep, and Contact tables are shared with the remote databases.
Row subsets All of the columns but only one of the rows of the SalesRep table are shared with each remote database.
For more information, see Partitioning rows among remote databases.
Timestamp-based synchronization This is a way of identifying changes that were made to the consolidated database since the last time a device synchronized. The Customer, Contact, and Product tables are synchronized using a method based on timestamps.
For more information, see Timestamp-based synchronization.