Data in Sync

Apart from all the functionality that PDAs offer, they are also popular because of their ability to interface with computers and synchronize data. For instance, you can download all your mail onto your PDA, and check and respond to them from your PDA itself. Later you can hook your PDA on to your PC and send the mail. When connected to the PC, the PDA synchronizes all data with the mailbox and even picks up changes from the address book.

Till about two years ago, however, the available synchronization protocols for doing this sort of work were proprietary and vendor-specific, which supported synchronization only on selected transports and for specified data types.

That’s when a new synchronization standard called SyncML was developed to overcome this problem. Companies like Erricson, IBM, Motorola and Nokia launched SyncML in February 2000, as a result of a collaborative effort. 

SyncML can work smoothly and efficiently over the Internet (HTTP), the wireless session protocol, OBEX (Blue tooth, infrared, etc), e-mail standards (SMTP, POP3 and IMAP), TCP/IP networks, and other proprietary wireless-communication protocols. It’s an open standard, free of any propriety liabilities. It supports seven different types of synchronization, which include two-way sync and slow sync. A typical synchronization can be divided into sub parts, for example, the two-way sync includes initialization, the actual synchronization and data mapping (or the representation protocol). 

The synchronization protocol defines how a SyncML data sync session is initialized, and how information used for connecting to the remote server is represented. The representation protocol (which is an XML markup language) defines the format that must be used to represent item data during synchronization. 

SyncML can synchronize data irrespective of the programming languages or the synchronization applications used by individual devices. Also, it has a very small footprint, making it ideal for mobile devices. Synchronization using SyncML is inherently secure as it needs authorization at different layers, namely server, database and object levels.

While we talked of PDA’s using SyncML, the usage is in no way restricted to PDA’s. Any mobile device which requires such synchronisation can use SyncML. Another common example would be a cellphone which would require its addressbook or calendar to be synchronized.

A similar protocol, called SyncML DM (SyncML Device Management), allows third parties, like wireless service providers, to remotely configure mobile devices. Such remote configuration allows the user of a mobile device to stay away from the gory configuration procedures that most devices seem to need, which he has to encounter while configuring the device himself, and instead have experts do it for him, possibly in an automated environment. 

It is two years since teh standard has come into being, and SyncML has been picked up and implemented in many devices. According to the governing body for SyncML, 99 products have so far become SyncML compliant. These include a mix of both SyncML enabled clients and servers. Some of these include the Nokia 7650, Nokia 9210 Communicator and Sony Erricson’s P800. 

Ankit Khare