Damien Katz wrote: > The problem with b) admin-enforced replication policies is that it's not > really possible. The replicator is just an agent of the user who invoked > it, it can choose to follow some rules set by the admin, or it follows > it's own rules. You can't give a user access to the database, but > enforce that they can only replicate it the admin specified way. If the > user can perform a certain update in the database using regular methods, > he can also do so via the replicator. Agreed. I thought about a model of making partial replication "with a user agreeing to a certain contract". One idea that flew around was a client to send javascripts, which in turn get executed server-side (imho a security nightmare, to be clear).
What I had in mind when the discussion came up, was a different usage scenario, namely Jens Alfke's vision of web3.0 with loosely coupled CouchDB instances replicating each other's datasets. For this case (e.g. "I want the CS-section of Wikipedia on my iPhone, not everything else like videos, etc."), I regard a partial replication as a feature. Everything that helps me reduce the load on either Wikipedia, or my phone, makes me happy and makes the whole system be more useable[1]. Martin [1] "scale" :-)
