Patent ID: 7392265

Claim:
A method of updating a locally stored version of a data set, wherein multiple application systems each maintain a separate stored version of the data set and are each capable of modifying an attribute of the data set, wherein the attribute comprises multiple attribute components that are each associated with a different one of the multiple application systems, and wherein each attribute component has a data value and a change value, the method comprising: receiving, from a first application system of the multiple application systems and at a second application system of the multiple application systems, a message containing a data set as locally stored in the first application system, wherein the message received by the second application system from the first application system includes the attribute component associated with the second application system; and for each attribute component of the received data set, comparing the attribute component's change value as stored locally in the second application system with the attribute component's change value as contained in the received data set, and if the comparison indicates that the version of the attribute component's data value as stored locally in the second application system is less recent than the version of the attribute component's data value contained in the received data set, replacing the attribute component's data value stored locally in the second application system with the attribute component's data value contained in the received data set.