What does the replicator do with conflict choices?

What does the replicator do with conflict choices?

It appears that Domino Designer 6 has some new options for handling save conflicts/replication conflicts on the Form Properties dialog box, but the Designer Help doesn't explain them very well.

What exactly are the differences between the following?

  • Create conflicts
  • Merge conflicts
  • Merge/No conflicts
  • Do not create conflicts
What does the replicator do, exactly, with each of these options?

Also, let me get your opinion on this:

I've been using "Merge conflicts" for several years and most of the documents in my database have a $ConflictAction="1" field. I still get replication conflicts even though two users definitely edited different fields.

When I turned on "Merge/No conflicts" and edited a document, I saw that $ConflictAction is set to "3." However, when my two servers replicate, the document that still has $ConflictAction="1" gets marked as a replication conflict.

Other than blowing away the field $ConflictAction (="1") first, how can I enable "Merge/No conflict"? Is that setting the preferred way in ND6 to get two documents to merge? Thanks for your advice, Maureen!

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First of all, here are the differences between the four conflict options.
  • If you choose create conflicts, the replicator picks a winner and a loser in the conflict. It then creates a conflict document for the loser as a response to the winner.
  • If you choose merge conflicts, we try to merge any conflicts. If there is a field-level conflict, we revert to creating conflict documents.
  • Merge/no conflict is much like merge conflicts, except that no conflict documents are created for the loser in a field-level conflict.
  • If you choose "Do not create conflicts," we don't try to merge and we don't create conflict documents, so the losing document is permanently lost.
As for your issue with Merge Conflicts, the only thing I can think of is that sometimes the form modifies a common field that you are unaware of. Other than that, there may be a bug that we would need to investigate.

As for your experience with Merge/No conflicts, if you already have documents with the $ConflictAction set to "1," it is very hard to get it changed. These legacy documents will be problematic. All new documents should have the "3" and not pose a problem.

And yes, you need to blow away the field $ConflictAction first by hand.

This was first published in October 2003

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