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Why Doesn’t Pulsar Sync Metadata During Every Catch-Up Sync?

Pulsar’s initial sync may take quite a bit of time, due to the amount of data and metadata. Most customers want the catchup sync to run fast and metadata sync can be time consuming depending on the number of items it has to download and process. So, Pulsar saves the user time by not syncing all the metadata during each subsequent catch-up sync. Pulsar queries the server to find the last modified date for the metadata and then downloads only the changesThis is the reason why the refresh settings scenarios described above exist to help force a metadata sync.

Example Scenario

There are some scenarios in which the last modified date for the metadata has not been changed, but a metadata sync is still needed. Permission changes are an example of this. If the admin grants a user access to a field after their initial sync, the field may not automatically appear to the user in the layout. The user attempts to update their layout information by performing a manual refresh. The user presses Refresh Settings and then Sync Now, but the layout still does not update to display the new field. In this case, the admin wants to force a metadata update to allow that new field to appear on the layout for the user. There was no change to any Pulsar settings or to the layout file to flag the metadata for sync using the last modified date. The admin forces an update to the last modified date by opening the Pulsar setting pulsar.sync.enableOneTimeSessionRefresh and saving it. Then the admin instructs the user to try a manual refresh again. This time, the user is successful.

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