Online/Offline Synchronization

The part of the Cairngorm Contact Manager application that shines is its capability to work in an offline mode. This means that even without a network connection to the server, the application can continue to function and allow the user to synchronize all the changes made when the network connection is restored.

Embedded Database

For the application to have this offline capability, it must maintain a copy of the data being edited locally. This is possible using Adobe AIR because every application can read and write to a local SQLite database. The embedded SQLite database that comes with the Cairngorm Contact Manager was created in advance and contains the same structure as the one that resides on the remote server with one difference. All the tables contain two extra columns called syncFlag and syncAction, which are used to determine if the data stored locally requires synchronization with the server when a connection is reestablished and what type of action should be taken, either a create or update. Therefore, it is easy for the application to maintain a local copy of the data and perform create/update operations.