Acknowledgment message

In ArcGIS, an acknowledgment message is a message sent from a database replica to its relative replica acknowledging the data changes received by the sending replica. Acknowledgment messages are exchanged between replicas in a disconnected environment to acknowledge receipt of data changes. A disconnected environment means that the parent and child replica geodatabases are not connected by a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN).

For replicas in a disconnected environment, synchronization is achieved through a process of manually exchanging messages between replicas. Two types of messages can be exchanged: data change messages and acknowledgment messages. Data change messages contain data changes, while acknowledgment messages acknowledge the receipt of data change messages. Replicas that are data senders can send data change messages, while replicas that are data receivers can send acknowledgment messages.

Acknowledgment file
In ArcGIS, an acknowledgment file is an XML file that contains an acknowledgment message. The acknowledgment file is sent using the Export Acknowledgment Message tool after the changes are imported by the disconnected replica.