Databases Synchronization Proposal

  > bmanning at ISI.EDU (Bill Manning) writes:
  > > 
  > >   > I think having a master registry is a good idea. 
  > > 
  > > It is not only a good idea but a requirement!  You usually do not have
  > > distributed notarys either. 
  > 
  > I expect that this model will not scale.  My limited view sez that this
  > looks like the hosts.txt problem that DNS was invented for.

It is not at all like hosts.txt.

First and foremost: Not every host needs a copy. Queries can be done to a 
limited set of servers.

Then: Incremental updates are possible.
The number of objects is significantly lower.
There reasons to have a master registry (per source:):
Consistency is easier to check and maintain.
Authentication is only possible to check.
A registry (as in registrar, notary) function is only possible to achieve
easily this way.


  > > The serial numbers can be used to discover missing updates in case of
  > > unreliable transport methods like e-mail.  This can then cause a
  > > re-fetch of the missing updates via another channel. 
  > 
  > I expect that the use of an e-mail channel is really bad, unless we
  > have somethign like PEM.

Use whatever channel/authenication is appropriate. Use FTP as backup. 
That's all I say.

Daniel



-------- Logged at  Mon Mar 6 17:52:03 MET 1995  ---------