Project Proposal CS4200

Final Year Project Proposal

for
Data Synchronization Between Different Internet Services

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

University of Moratuwa

Submitted on 6th June 2009

Project Mentors: Project Group ( PI-02):

Chandika Jayasundara (CEO Cinergix) K. Bogahapitiya – 060051J

Hiraash Thawfeek (CTO Cinergix) N. Cassim – 060056E

P.K.H.A Sirisena – 060461P

P.N.A.P Jayasena – 060195D

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Introduction

This document provides the proposal detail for the project Data synchronization between
different Internet services. It provides the introduction for the project, the problem definition, the
solution provided by us, the scope of the project, its extendibility and the timeline.

At present, people use many different devices to communicate with each other and to store their
important personal or business data. These data are stored in some of the devices and must be
synchronized between the different devices. In this way information is also spread over the
Internet in different web services and often Internet users look for programs where they can
synchronize data between different web services. The objective of this project is to implement a
generalized solution for data synchronization over the Internet.

Problem Definition

The Internet offers a wide range of web services to the user. Some of the most popular web
services today are webmail, blogs, social networking sites (like Twitter, Facebook), file sharing,
e-commerce sites (like Ebay and Amazon) and of course there is much more. We access a
multitude of web services every time we visit the Internet and quite often we want to send
information available on one web service to another.

Examples of such situations are given below:

- Synchronizing data between two file servers

- Synchronizing data between different databases
-Using a feed reader to see updates on a list of blogs
-Using a feed reader to see updates on a list of blogs

Separate applications have been built to solve each of these situations. Google Reader was
introduced by Google for reading blogs and other feeds. Applications have been created using
the Facebook API to enable updating your Facebook status with your Twitter status. Also there

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are applications built for synchronizing data between two file servers. However there is no single
application that can achieve all of this in one place.

In brief the problem we are addressing through this project is the non-existence of a single web service
that can extract data from multiple web services and provide data synchronization between them.

Proposed Solution

Our solution suggests the data synchronization between web services in which a variety of
services can be connected. This service will be responsible for monitoring and notifying data
updates and also calling other services upon pre-defined events.

The services connected to the core services can be different (web services, db, ftp, etc). The main
aim is to provide the core functionality in which the monitoring and calling the predefined events
are done. The client services that require the synchronization process will be connected to the
core service by plug-ins. The core service is generic in which all the client services’ functionality
specifications are built in the plug-in.

Following is the schematic diagram for the proposed solution.

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‘x’ is the core service which will be implemented. The client services will be connected via plug-
ins. For each client service the user can request the service they want, the service core will be
monitoring the services for requests.

The following examples would be an output of the proposed solution.

• Facebook account status will be synchronized with Twitter account status.

• Updates from an RSS feed can be displayed in another web application

Scope
The project will mainly focus on building a core that can retrieve updates from different Internet
services. To demonstrate the functionality of the core there will be a minimum of three Internet
services connected at the inputs for client services of the core. These 3 services will be of
different types, such as a database service, RSS feed and HTML page. As mentioned in the
solution each of these services will be connected to the core through plugins so as to make the
core generic.

The deliverables of the project are synchronizations set up between different web services. To
demonstrate this we will have a minimum of 2 synchronizations set up. One such
synchronization could be sending Facebook status updates to a Twitter account. The project also
aims to produce a new web service to the user (an end user product) that utilizes the core to
provide the user with some new functionality.

Extendibility

The core of this product can be implemented in such a way that it will perform the common
functions of any data communication path and it will provide an API to write plug-ins to handle
things that are specific to that particular communication path. This is how it will support for the
extendibility for future requirements of data synchronization among any other Internet services.

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The idea we have presented here for extendibility means many more aspects of web services.
One of the main aspects that IT community has discovered so far in this regard is that, how to
represent your data to other party so that they will be able to read the data on your data source.
Currently existing solutions we have mentioned on this document use RSS feed, XML data
formats. But these have been adapted to the requirements of the communication among those
particular services. Therefore in future, when we focus at extending this in to more and more
Internet services, we have to focus on the how we present our information. This is the main
restriction we have identified from the point of view of extendibility.
In future this product can be extended to meet the requirements of Hosting Companies, Web
Designers, Software Developers and many others who deal with multiple server platforms and
need to synchronize data.

Project Schedule

References
http://www.theserverside.com
http://www.webmaster-talk.com
http://en.wikipedia.org
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