Gears of Data Synchronization
Google Gears API Developer’s Guide (Beta) - Architecture
Resolving these differences so that the two stores are the same is called “synchronization”. There are many approaches to synchronization and none are perfect for all situations. The solution you ultimately choose will likely be highly customized to your particular application.
[emphasis mine]
Data Synchronization is perhaps the next technological “platform” in every developer’s toolchest. I’ve been diving deeper into this topic to gain a better understanding of what the market place looks like and what standard solutions are off the shelf. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look good for a practitioner’s perspective.
I don’t think the idea of system of record is going away, but pulling a record, making changes and updating the record currently with edits to the SOR is becoming more and more common. “Current trends suggest that this pattern will matter more, not less, over time. In a service-oriented world, systems of record will recede into the background.” A lot of custom code is currently hand written to manage reconciliation or synchronization for “detached” datasets. WS-* and its document-centric interfaces is bringing this integration need to the foreground, albeit slowly.
Think of it as a general purpose data synchroization framework where commits and rollbacks are replaced with merge and resolve conflict.