Abstract: Synchronization of distributed data is of importance to ship maintenance,which is an efficient means required for ship operating company to access real-time information of ship operation status.This paper is to give a kind of data synchronization solution for ship maintenance based on the distributed database(both ship-based database and shore-based database) of ship operating company.The disadvantages of existing data synchroni ization such as failure of addressing the hull structure maintenance,poor extension of format expression,untransmittability of attachment and insufficient security handling mechanism are presented.The flows of synchron ized data specific for maintenance process are also examined.In addition,the main technical issues with regard to the existing data synchronization are investigated,including expression of ADO.NET-based XML synchroniza tion files,processing of incremental synchronization documents,synchronization attachments compression,security handling of concurrent and deadlock,etc.