On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 11:19 PM, Daniel Paull <[email protected]> wrote:

> hi John,
>
> That's an excellent description of what goes on between clients and
> servers when there are concurrent edits.  It's a great starting point
> for forming a picture in your mind.
>
> There are probably a few details that aren't quite right - but that
> may be because there is no standard way that the client and server
> communicate and e are all confused because of this!  For example, you
> said, "Client A sends an empty delta to ping the server ([...@v8) and
> gets a response of [B1',B2',B3',B4',B5'], now at v10)."  This is not
> how it should work.  The server is able to send updates to the clients
> at any time rather than clients polling the server for updates.  The
> OT whitepaper talks about a broadcast of transformed operations to
> clients.  This broadcast must happen before the acknowledgement is
> sent back to the originating client.
>
>
Dan,

If the client in question is a web client, and we aren't using WebSocket or
a hack like long polling, then no, the server can't send updates to the
clients when ever it feels like it. This is especially true when dealing
with a back end system like AppEngine...

brett


> Cheer,
>
> Dan
>
> On Feb 3, 6:37 pm, John Barstow <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Turner <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Hi John,
> >
> > > Is that correct? If so, I'm a little confused about how the clients
> > > deal with this. For example, client A has applied A1, A2 and A3, and
> > > gets back streamA' from the server (right?). But it can't just apply
> > > B1-3', can it? I haven't worked it out, but I don't believe that that
> > > would work. Does client A hold off on "committing" its changes to its
> > > own content until it gets the up-to-date version from the server
> > > (whether compressed by the Composer or not)?
> >
> > Here's how I explain it; note that I'm working off memory at the
> > moment so someone might have to correct me.
> >
> > At startup, clients A and B get the latest version from the server.
> > Let's be arbitrary and say we start at v7. So the server and both
> > clients are synced at v7.
> >
> > Key point 1: The "last known version" is how the server knows what
> > needs to be transformed! It's sent as part of every delta.
> >
> > Client A generates some operations. Let's say [A1, A2, A3]. It sends a
> > delta to the server containing the operations and the last version it
> > knows about. ([A1,A2,a...@v7)
> >
> > Server sees the delta from client A, sees that it's still at v7, so
> > just commits the delta as v8. It sends back a response that
> > essentially says (no changes, now at v8).
> >
> > Client A has no outstanding edits, so it just bumps the "last known
> > version" variable internally.
> >
> > Client B generates [B1, B2, B3] and sends a delta ([B1, B2, b...@v7).
> > While waiting for a response, it generates [B4, B5].
> >
> > Key point 2: Any operations generated while waiting for a server
> > response need to be tracked, because they might get transformed!
> >
> > Server sees the delta from client B, and that there is a newer
> > version. So it takes all the operations committed since v7 and
> > transforms them.
> >
> > [A1, A2, A3] x [B1, B2, B3] = [A1', A2', A3'], [B1', B2', B3']
> >
> > The B' operations get saved as v9. The server generates a response
> > saying ([A1',A2', A3'], now at v9).
> >
> > Client B now needs to apply the changes returned by the server, but it
> > has some pending operations. That means it needs to apply a transform.
> >
> > [A1', A2', A3'] x [B4, B5] = [A1", A2", A3"], [B4', B5']. Client B
> > applies the A" operations and bumps the "last known version" to v9.
> > The [B4', B5'] can now be sent to the server as a delta ([B4',
> > B5']...@v9).
> >
> > Since v9 is that latest version, the server applies the delta as v10.
> > The response says (no changes, now at v10). Client B has no more
> > pending operations, so it just bumps the "last known version" to v10.
> >
> > Client A sends an empty delta to ping the server ([...@v8) and gets a
> > response of ([B1',B2',B3',B4',B5'], now at v10).
> >
> > Since Client A has no pending operations, it applies the delta as-is
> > and bumps the "last known version" to v10.
> >
> > We're done, now the server and both clients are synced at v10, even
> > though all three applied different sets of operations!
> >
> > Anyplace you have a sequence of operations bundled up - anywhere I've
> > used [ ] brackets - you can optionally do a compose to reduce the
> > length of the sequence.
> >
> > I hope that makes sense! Tracing that out was the main thing I did to
> > get my head around the algorithm.
>
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-- 
Brett Morgan http://domesticmouse.livejournal.com/

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