arXiv · 2602.19231
Semantic Conflict Model for Collaborative Data Structures
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.
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Georgii Semenov, Vitaly Aksenov. 2026-02-22. Semantic Conflict Model for Collaborative Data Structures. https://doi.org/10.1145/3806077.3806700
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