Patent ID: 6138124
Filing Date: 2000-10-24
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
In a distributed computing environment in which each of two documents contains data arranged in a plurality of fields, at least some of the fields of one of the documents corresponding to at least some of the fields of the other of the documents, and at least two fields in each document being revisable, a method for replicating data contained in one of the documents to the other of the documents by replicating only the field or fields which have been revised, the method comprising:dynamically maintaining a document sequence number for each of the documents representing the number of revisions made to each of the documents;dynamically maintaining a field sequence number for each of the revisable fields;when a replication is to be made, determining which of the documents is more recently revised;determining which one or more fields in the more recently revised document are more recently revised than the corresponding one or more fields in the other of the documents based on some or all of the field sequence numbers and document sequence numbers; andreplicating the data contained in each more recently revised field to the corresponding field in the other of the documents.