1. A non-transitory machine readable medium containing executable program instructions which cause a data processing system to perform a method comprising: modifying or creating, by the data processing system, a record in a database maintained locally by the data processing system; encoding, by the data processing system, the database record into metadata; and sending, by the data processing system, the metadata as a first type of email message to a remote email message server, the first type of email message subsequently processed by a remote client application executing on a remote platform, the remote client application providing live controls that process the metadata to update a remote database on the remote platform without displaying any of metadata to a user as an email message, wherein the remote database is synchronized with a message server database based at least in part on two snapshot differences and resolving a conflict between the remote database and the message server database when the two snapshot differences indicate a conflict, a first snapshot difference abased on a difference of a current snapshot of the message server database with a reference snapshot of the message server database, and a second snapshot difference based on a difference of a current snapshot of the remote database with the reference snapshot of the message server database.