XML three-way merge as a reconciliation engine for mobile data

Abstract

Optimistic replication approaches are often employed on mobile devices, which raises the need for reconciliation of concurrently modified data. We propose that three-way merging algorithms, in particular those that are able to process tree-structured data in XML format, make good candidates for a generic data reconciliation engine on mobile devices.By exchanging data through XML files we impose minimal constraints on application design and are able to offer reconciliation services to a large number of existing applications. Reconciliation support can be added to an application in several increments, allowing application developers to choose a suitable level of support compared to implementation effort. We give two examples of reconciliation by three-way merging of XML.