It is common in distributed systems to replicate data. In many cases, this data
evolves in a consistent fashion, and this evolution can be modeled. A probabilistic
model of the evolution allows us to estimate the divergence of the replicas and
can be used by the application to alter its behavior, for example, to control synchronization
times, to determine the propagation of writes, and to convey to the user information
about how much the data may have evolved. In this paper, we describe how the evolution
of the data may be modeled and outline how the probabilistic model may be utilized
in various applications, concentrating on a news database example.
