Google gears has the potential to revolutionise applications. When a
server goes down, local clients have a problem if they change the same
data in offline mode or need to carry on collaborating. By offering a
client with backend capabilities, new opportunities arise. The problem
when a server goes down is that communication between the server and
client is lost. If however a secondary server can be located and
synchronised with, this would facilitate the continued use of the
application without loss of syncronisation. When the primary server
comes back online, the secondary server simply resyncs its data, or
becomes primary. This maintains sync between clients at all times.
Given that all clients are themselves servers, it is also possible to
nominate a sync server within the visible group, to reflect all their
changes. For example, say gmail goes down. In a current gears enabled
version of gmail, the clients on a local network would all be able to
view their own mail. However, new email could not be sent even across
the internal network which is still functioning. If gears was able to
function as a server not just for itself as it does currently, but had
peer to peer communications, it would be able to continue
communication internally, resyncing when gmail came back online. If
you could do this please, it would make me happy and stop people
whining when gmail goes down. Thanks, Rob
