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Conflict resolution is a key feature of file collaboration that is in effect at the start of a job. When a File Collaboration job begins, the host participants' configured watch sets are synchronized by a scan and merge phase, during which conflicts can be detected.
This topic describes:
•How file conflicts are defined.
•The scheme, and the
•Options for resolving conflicts.
When a job begins, the participants' folders are first scanned and then merged to form a collective view of the content of all participants. All files found under the designated folders are subject to collaboration or synchronization, except for those excluded by file filters (see File Filters for more details).
A potential conflict occurs when a file path is found to exist on more than one host in a File Collaboration job. For example, the following files are found to be in conflict:
\\Host-A\FC-Session-UserGuide\release-1.0\readme.txt
\\Host-B\FileCollab-UG\release-1.0\readme.txt
\\Host-C\FCS-UserGuide\release-1.0\readme.txt
In this example, the file \release-1.0\readme.txt is found to be in conflict across three hosts. Note that each host can designate varying root folders. Conflicts may occur across a partial or total set of participants.
A file conflict can occur for any of the following reasons:
•Two users open a file at the same time, or in-and-around the same time.
•A file is open at the start of a job and has been modified on a host where the configured conflict resolution strategy selects a different host as the winner.
•Two or more users have the same file open on different hosts when a collaboration job is started.
•A file was modified on two or more hosts between job restarts or network outages.
•Peer Management Center is unable to obtain a lock on a target host file for various reasons.
•Peer Management Center may conflict a file when an unexpected error occurs or a file is in an unexpected state.
The goal of file conflict resolution is to designate one instance of a conflicted file as the "winning" copy or the one designated as the source for synchronization. The criteria for resolving conflicts are based on the file's metadata, such as size, modification time or host name.
It is important to note that conflict resolution must select a single instance of a file, although it is quite possible that several copies of a file are potential candidates. Drawing from the examples listed in the previous section, if our session was configured to resolve conflicts based on a files last modified time and all instances of \release-1.0\readme.txt had the same size and last modified time, then all three would be resolution candidates. In this case, the winner would be arbitrarily selected from the candidate set. This concept applies to all resolution types that are prone to multiple candidate selection.
Once the merge and conflict resolution phases have completed for the session, synchronization transfers begin to distribute the source content. This includes all source copies of conflict winners as well as files that are missing from participants.
See File Conflicts View for a more detailed explanation on how the file conflict process works and how to remove file conflicts and quarantines.