The problem of data synchronization arises in networked applications that require some measure of consistency. Indeed data synchronization approaches have demonstrated a significant potential for improving performance in various applications ranging from distributed ledgers to fog-enabled storage offloading for IoT. Although several protocols for data sets synchronization have been proposed over the years, there is currently no widespread utility implementing them, unlike the popular Rsync utility available for file synchronization. To that end, we describe a new middleware called GenSync that abstracts the subtleties of the state-of-the-art data synchronization protocols, allows users to choose protocols based on a comparative evaluation under realistic system conditions, and seamlessly integrate protocols in existing applications through a public API. We showcase GenSync through a case study, in which we integrate it into one of the world's largest wireless emulators and compare the performance of its included protocols.

翻译：数据同步问题出现在需要一定一致性保障的网络化应用中。事实上，从分布式账本到面向物联网的雾计算存储卸载，数据同步方法在提升各类应用性能方面展现出巨大潜力。尽管多年来已提出多种数据集同步协议，但与此类应用广泛使用的文件同步工具Rsync不同，目前尚未有普及的实用程序实现这些协议。为此，我们提出一种名为GenSync的新型中间件，该中间件可抽象最先进数据同步协议的细节，支持用户基于实际系统条件下的对比评估选择协议，并通过公共API将协议无缝集成至现有应用中。我们通过一个案例研究展示GenSync，将其集成至全球最大的无线仿真器之一，并比较其包含协议的性能。