The idea of SymmetricDS was born from a real-world need. Several of the original developers were implementing a commercial Point of Sale (POS) system for a large retailer. The development team came to the conclusion that the software available for "trickling back" transactions to the central office did not meet the project needs. The developers started an open-source project, now known as SymmetricDS, to build a generalized, flexible software product that would allow scalable replication across heterogeneous databases for the project and for others with similar needs. Over the years, SymmetricDS has been used successfully in a variety of domains, including but not limited to retail, medical, and telecommunications, and in installations with just a few nodes to tens of thousands of nodes.