Easy to get started   Using the Create Synchronization Model Wizard, you can create synchronization applications quickly. The wizard can handle many difficult implementation details of complex synchronization systems. Sybase Central allows you to view a synchronization model offline, provides an easy interface for making changes, and has a deployment option for you to deploy the model to your consolidated database.

Monitoring and reporting   MobiLink provides three mechanisms for monitoring your synchronizations: the MobiLink Monitor, The SQL Anywhere Monitor for MobiLink, and statistical scripts.

Performance tuning   There are several mechanisms for tuning MobiLink performance. For example, you can adjust the degree of contention, upload cache size, number of database connections, logging verbosity, or BLOB cache size.

Scalability   MobiLink is an extremely scalable and robust synchronization platform. A single MobiLink server can handle thousands of simultaneous synchronizations, and multiple MobiLink servers can be run simultaneously using load balancing. The MobiLink server is multi-threaded and uses connection pooling with the consolidated database.

Security   MobiLink provides extensive security options, including user authentication that can be integrated with your existing authentication, encryption, and transport-layer security that works by the exchange of secure certificates. MobiLink also provides FIPS-certified security options.

Relay server and Sybase Relay Server hosting service   The Relay Server enables secure, load-balanced communication between mobile devices and back-end servers through a web server. See Introduction to the Relay Server.

The Sybase Relay Server hosting service is a farm of Relay Servers hosted by Sybase that enables you to more easily develop and evaluate mobile applications that use MobiLink data synchronization, especially where data is sent using public wireless networks. See Sybase Hosted Relay Service.

The diagram below shows how the Relay Server fits into a MobiLink environment.

Data coordination   MobiLink allows you to choose selected portions of the data for synchronization. MobiLink synchronization also allows you to resolve conflicts between changes made in different databases. The synchronization process is controlled by synchronization logic, which can be written as a SQL, Java, or .NET application. Each piece of logic is called a script. With scripts, for example, you can specify how uploaded data is applied to the consolidated database, specify what gets downloaded, and handle different schema and names between the consolidated and remote databases. Event-based scripting provides great flexibility in the design of the synchronization process, including such features as conflict resolution, error reporting, and user authentication.

Two-way synchronization   Changes to a database can be made at any location.

Upload-only or download-only synchronization   By default synchronization is two-way, with both an upload and a download. However, you can also choose to perform an upload-only synchronization or a download-only synchronization.

File-based download   Downloads can be distributed as files, enabling offline distribution of synchronization changes. This feature includes functionality to ensure that the correct data is applied.

Server-initiated synchronization   You can initiate MobiLink synchronization from the consolidated database. This means you can push data updates to remote databases, and cause remote databases to upload data to the consolidated database. See MobiLink - Server-Initiated Synchronization.

You can use server-initiated remote tasks (SIRT) as an alternative to server-initiated synchronization. For more information, see Central administration of remote databases and Server-initiated remote tasks (SIRT).

Choice of network protocols   Synchronization can occur over TCP/IP, HTTP, or HTTPS. Windows Mobile devices can synchronize using Microsoft ActiveSync.

Session-based   All changes can be uploaded in a single transaction and downloaded in a single transaction. At the end of each successful synchronization, the consolidated and remote databases are consistent. (If you want to preserve the order of transactions, you can also choose to have each transaction on the remote database uploaded as a separate transaction.)

Either a whole transaction is synchronized, or none of it is synchronized. This ensures transactional integrity for each database.

Data consistency   MobiLink operates using a loose consistency policy. All changes are synchronized with each site over time in a consistent manner, but different sites may have different copies of data at any instant.

Wide variety of hardware and software platforms   A variety of widely-used database management systems can be used as a MobiLink consolidated database, or you can define synchronization to an arbitrary data source using the MobiLink server API. Remote databases can be SQL Anywhere or UltraLite. The MobiLink server runs on Windows, Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X. SQL Anywhere runs on Windows, Windows Mobile, or Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X. UltraLite runs on Windows Mobile or BlackBerry. See Supported platforms.

MobiLink arbiter   A MobiLink arbiter ensures that only a single MobiLink server in a server farm is running as the primary server. This prevents redundant notifications in a server-initiated synchronization environment and preserves messages in a QAnywhere messaging environment. The diagram below shows the MobiLink arbiter in a server farm environment.