How does iSync recognise changes in Mac and phone

Question

Hi all,
After getting a brand new cellphone Motorola V3X, i managed to transfer all contacts from my MAC address book to the phone via iSync.
However, i noted the following:
1. Let say in MAC address book there is an entry called
"sarah jessica" (as first name) and "parker" (as last name), after sync and transferred to phone, the phone first name becomes "sarah-jessica" while last name remains. The same applies when 2 words appeared in last name, and it will be separated with "-" in phone after sync. Any idea?
2. Assuming both phone and MAC address book are in sync, and i made changes to contact A in MAC then later made a different change in contact A in phone. If i sync, which entry will be considered as the latest and how does iSync differentiate it?
Sorry for the length questions as i am a newbie with iSync.
Thanks

Answer 1

It's difficult to answer your question directly, because not all sync schemas and their extensions are public. I think Julian is absolutely correct when he points to the behavior you see being the result of Motorola's implementation of contact records. Their structure is generally more restrictive—far less flexible, actually—than those of others like Nokia and SONY Ericsson, and Apple programmers and developers must work within the bounds of these implementations when matching data records through iSync. Some of the issues are very clearly Motorola's alone, and some are likely generic Symbian issues.
This link is a general overview of how the Sync Services framework operates, and might help you understand the second observation you raised:
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/syncservices.html
This one is a link to the public schema for the Address Book, and shows that it is actually much more detailed and complex than surely almost anyone outside of the developer community understands:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SyncService sSchemaRef/index.html
And, it's made more so when extensions are added by third-parties to the schema, like those in CRM applications and alternative synchronization programs like the Missing Sync for Palm OS.