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Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is a complicated matter, and I will consider it to beyond the scope of this report. And since conflict resolution is application-specific I will leave it up to the applications, then they can leave the resolution of conflicts to the ultimate experts; the users.

Coda has application-specific resolvers (ASRs) that can be provided by programmers, Ficus has something of the same sort (though I do believe it is somehow based on filetypes) but they are provided by the system. Bayou applications must specify a conflict resolver, called a merge procedure, for each write/update.

In Bayou conflict detection and conflict resolution can be given for each write/update, whereas in Coda and Ficus conflict detection is performed by the system and conflict resolvers are global [39]. I think that Bayou's solution is much more flexible, but it inevitably leads to more programming, and existing applications cannot be used at all!