Techniques to track and publish changes to object instances. For an
"outbound process" to publish object instances, a list of object
instances is initially received. For each received object instance, a
determination is made whether or not the object instance has changed
since its last publication. For each changed object instance, a delta
snapshot is generated and includes data indicative of changes between the
current and last published versions of the object instance. Delta
snapshots for all changed object instances are then published. For an
"inbound process" to receive object instances, the published delta
snapshots are initially received. For each received delta snapshot, the
corresponding object instance is retrieved and updated with the changes
included in the delta snapshot. A new snapshot is also generated for each
updated object instance such that the received changes are not published,
and unpublished changes made locally are noted for subsequent
publication.