New post
Question
· May 19, 2016

Can Object Synchronization be used with more than two servers?

#Distributed Data Management #Object Data Model #Caché

Consider a design where there could be three or four or more servers and there is a need to have these eventually consistent between them all (and not considering database mirroring here).  

The current Caché documentation here demonstrates this well using object synchronization between two servers, however it doesn't indicate whether more than two servers can participate to create a "mesh type" deployment.  Below is a diagram of what I'm curious to know is possible to implement with Object Synchronization.

Discussion (2)1
Log in or sign up to continue
Stefan Wittmann · May 19, 2016

I am not able to view the image, but in general Object Synchronization can be used by multiple servers. The architecture is designed in such a way, that usually one node is taking the role of a master and all other nodes become clients to this master.

You can implement other schemes as well, as indicated by this paragraph in the documentation:

For object synchronization, the idea of client and server is by convention only. For any two databases, you can perform bidirectional updates; if there are more than two databases, you can choose what scheme you use to update all of them (such as local databases synchronizing with a main database independently).

There is no support for bi-directional updates at the same time, so you have to sync one direction first and after that happened you can sync the other way around. The more complex your mesh becomes the harder it becomes to resolve conflicts.

That's why the documentation recommends staying with a master / client scheme, as this reduces the complexity of resolving conflicts.

Also, you have to be aware that Object Synchronization is not built for real-time updates. You are synchronizing at discrete intervals.

2 0