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This chapter describes basic concepts of different sync types. For more detail, please refer to documents in Funambol.
The two-way sync is a normal synchronization type in which the client and the server exchange information about the modified data in these devices. The client is always the device which first sends the modifications. According to the information from the client, the server processes the synchronization request and the data from the client is compared and unified with the data in the server. After that, the server sends its modified data to the client device, which is then able to update its database with the data from the server.
The slow sync is a form of the two-way synchronization in which all items in one or more databases are compared with each other on a field-by-field basis. In practice, the slow sync means that the client sends all its data in a database to the server and the server does the sync analysis (field-by-field) for this data and the data in the server. After the sync analysis, the server returns all needed modifications back to the client. Also, the client returns the Map items for all data items, which were added by the server.
After any of the one-way sync operations following, the client and the server might lost sync to each other since they may then have different contents.
The one-way sync from the client is the sync type in which the client sends all modifications to the server but the server does not send its modifications back to the client. Thus, after this type of sync, the server includes all modified data from the client but the client does not know about modifications in the server. This operation just exports data from the client to the server.
Please note, even if the client asks for one-way sync from the client, sometimes the server may still require two-way sync, particularly when the client has updates. The client will then do slow sync as requested by the server.
This one-way sync from the server is the case in which the client gets all modifications from the server but the client does not send its modifications to the server. Thus, after this type of sync, the client includes all modified data from the server but the server does not know about modifications in the client. This operation imports data from the server.
Please note, even if the client asks for one-way sync from the server, sometimes the server may still require two-way sync, particularly when the client has updates.
The "refresh sync from client" is a synchronization type in which the server sends all its data to the client. The client is expected to replace all data in the database with the data from server. Open Contacts would prompt for conformation before deleting all contact info in the local database.