Propogating updates efficiently in hierarchically structured date

The present invention relates to distributed computing systems and databases. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus that facilitates detecting changes in hierarchically structured data and producing corresponding updates for remote copies of the hierarchically structured data. One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that efficiently propagates changes in hierarchically organized data to remotely cached copies of the data. The system operates by receiving an access to the data at a client. In response to this access, the system determines if the client contains a copy of the data. If so, the system sends a request to a server for an update to the copy. The server receives the request and determines differences between the current version of the data at the server and an older copy of the data at the client, which the server has stored locally. These differences are used to construct an update for the copy of the data, which may include node insertion and node deletion operations for hierarchically organized nodes in the data. Next, the update is sent to the client where it is applied to the copy of the data to produce an updated copy of the data. Finally, the original access is allowed to proceed on the updated copy of the data. According to one aspect of the present invention, the act of determining differences, and the act of using the differences to construct the update both take place during a single pass through the data. According to another aspect of the present invention, the update for the copy of the data may include node copy, node move, node collapse and node splitting operations.