[Owncloud] Re: Why SyncML (was Re: GSoC Sync Client - Server Component)

[Riccardo Iaconelli]

On Wednesday 22 June 2011 10:32:54 Cédric Venet wrote:
> One question which has not been answered is what are the advantages of
> SyncML versus other protocol? It was only said that this was a standard
> with lot of existing clients... from the wikipedia page (i know this is not
> a reference), i get:
> * A fairly intricate and vague protocol specification
> has meant that in general there are major interworking problems with
> different servers against different clients

There are some incompatibility issues between non-compliant clients. But 
that's a bit like saying that there are problems with using HTML if IE is 
broken...

> * SyncML requires a /database
> name/ to be specified for opening a connection. This database name is not
> standardized, and different servers use different names for the same
> service

database name is like a "folder".

> * According to the documentation in the Funambol SyncML wiki, there
> is no conflict resolution. The server can only be set to 'client wins' or
> 'server wins' in case a field has been edited both on server and on client.

So what? :) the client can simply do the merge (akunambol does that already), 
and then you set the server to "client wins"...
 
> This does not seems very interesting. A complex and incomplete standard is
> worst than a simple well defined one. Especially if there is no good php
> implementation (and KDE does not support SynML?).

It does, and we can do great stuff with it!

> But maybe this is wrong
> (since it is from wikipedia). So why push so much in favor of syncml?

Above are some reasons of why it makes sense, but also read the archives for 
the rest. :)

Bye,
-Riccardo