On 30 Jul 2012, at 02:10, Steven J Klein wrote:

That sounds hopeful.

This is an interesting article. Thank you for the link. Drew McCormack the author helps explain only some of the important design components. Perhaps enough to make a rough and ready sync project but not enough to explain the policy consequences on user control over their content.

The design is obscure and he makes a good job in showing how obscure. His description of the CoreData Transaction plist only to fail to explain the third number out of three is jaw dropping admission of how obscure the design is for developers.

So it turns out to be a bit less hopeful

then he writes

"Importing Transactions

When import logs are transferred to a device, Core Data attempts to import them into the local store. The exact details of this are very vague. Basically, the process is private, and Apple do not provide any hooks into the import procedure."

This obscurity is very obscure isn't it!

From an architecture perspective this article shows developers are in the dark to describe the design structure of the import functionality let alone what goes on within the Apple server services. So how are they to shine a light on the end to end transaction to their users in turn?

No doubt one can get to the bottom of this as a developer in a few days or weeks or months of effort to implement a sync service. What it does not get to the bottom of is what happens in the bits the developer cannot see nor appear able to describe in the network, servers and any intermediate system components.  

I have a little experience. :-)
but happy to keep learning ...

thanks

Christian