CRDT: Datatype for the Apocalypse by Alexander Songe.
From the description:
Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) are a hot new datatype in distributed programming that promise coordination-free and always eventually-consistent writes. Most of the stuff you will read about them is limited to the context of high-end distributed databases, but CRDT’s are more flexible and shouldn’t be limited to this field. In the talk, I will demonstrate how CRDT’s are great for applications that have partial connectivity (including websites): updates can be applied locally, and when communication is possible, you can send the data back up, and the data will remain consistent even in the most byzantine (or apocalyptic) scenarios. There are even scenarios that can support multiple simultaneous editors.
Beyond that, I will also demonstrate how Elixir’s metaprogramming can be used to compose complex models out of CRDT’s that themselves exhibit the same exact features. I will also exhibit some newer CRDT features, such as shared-context and delta-operation CRDT’s to overcome some of the shortcomings of older CRDT’s.
I plan to keep the talk light on theory (the academic literature is sufficient for that).
Great presentation on CRDTs!
I hope we are closer to use of CRDTs with documents than Alexander appears to think. Starting at time mark 5:27, Alexander says that document CRDTs can be ten times the size of the document for collaborative editing. (rough paraphrase)
I have written to Alexander to inquire if it would be possible to have more granular CRDTs, such as <p> element CRDTs which would address changes only to a particular paragraph and a separate document level CRDT that covers changes at the document (insertion/deletion of paragraphs)?
Alexander is the author of the loom CRDT library and the one link I didn’t see in Alexander’s presentation was for his GitHub page: https://github.com/asonge.
Additional resources cited in the presentation:
Lindsey Kuper – http://composition.al/
Christopher Meiklejohn – http://christophermeiklejohn.com
Summary Paper: Marc Sharpiro, Nuno Pregui,ca, Carlos Baquero, Markek Zawirksi http://hal.upmc.fr/inria-00555588/document
(I supplied the links for Carlos Bquero and riak_dt.)
If you think about it, static data is an edge case of the sources of data always being in flux. (Date arising from the measurement or recording of those sources.)