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Extending JSON CRDTs with Move Operations

Liangrun Da and Martin Kleppmann

11th Workshop on Principles and Practice of Consistency for Distributed Data (PaPoC), Athens, Greece, April 2024.

Abstract

Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) for JSON allow users to concurrently update a JSON document and automatically merge the updates into a consistent state. Moving a subtree in a map or reordering elements in a list within a JSON CRDT is challenging: naive merge algorithms may introduce unexpected results such as duplicates or cycles. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for move operations in a JSON CRDT that handles the interaction with concurrent non-move operations, and uses novel optimisations to improve performance. We plan to integrate this algorithm into the Automerge CRDT library.