Abstract: A landscaping watering system has a probe for monitoring a moisture content of an area. A control unit is coupled to the probe for sending an activation signal to activate a flow of water when a signal from the probe indicates the moisture content of the area is below a predefined level. The control unit sends a deactivation signal to stop a flow of water when a signal from the probe indicates the moisture content of the area is above a predefined level. A water solenoid valve is coupled to a water line, the control unit and to at least one sprinkler. The water solenoid valve will receive the activation and deactivation signals from the control unit to start and stop a flow of water from the water line to the at least one sprinkler.

Abstract: The present invention provides a “data centric” approach to updating databases on computer systems of an intermittently connected database system. In this approach, the storage and processing complexity of the database server are de-coupled from the number of clients to be supported, thereby, improving the scalability of the server. Instead of focusing on the data required by individual clients, this method tracks changes to data subsets pertaining to groups of clients. Thus, the server need only track and record changes to these subsets of data, instead of tracking changes for individual clients. Clients download the subsets, which contain the data relevant to the group, and merges data or deletes superfluous data from the subsets. Since the server is tracking a limited set of data subsets related to groups of clients instead of the actual number of the clients, the overall scalability of the system is increased.