Semantic Conflict Model for Collaborative Data Structures

TL;DR

This paper presents a semantic conflict model for collaborative data structures that enables explicit, local conflict resolution without central coordination, improving transparency and flexibility in distributed collaboration.

Contribution

It introduces a novel conflict model based on semantic dependencies, allowing explicit conflict resolution through rebasing and three-way merging in replicated journals.

Findings

Demonstrated explicit conflict resolution on collaborative registers.

Formulated a Last-Writer-Wins Register with semantic conflict handling.

Supported semi-automatic reconciliation in multi-register entities.

Abstract

Digital collaboration systems support asynchronous work over replicated data, where conflicts arise when concurrent operations cannot be unambiguously integrated into a shared history. While Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) ensure convergence through built-in conflict resolution, this resolution is typically implicit and opaque to users, whereas existing reconciliation techniques often rely on centralized coordination. This paper introduces a conflict model for collaborative data structures that enables explicit, local-first conflict resolution without central coordination. The model identifies conflicts using semantic dependencies between operations and resolves them by rebasing conflicting operations onto a reconciling operation via a three-way merge over a replicated journal. We demonstrate our approach on collaborative registers, including an explicit formulation of the Last-Writer-Wins Register and a multi-register entity supporting semi-automatic reconciliation.