Chapter 16: Replication

Overview

Today's enterprise needs to distribute its data across many departments and geographically dispersed offices. SQL Server replication provides ways to distribute data and database objects among its SQL Server databases, databases from other vendors such as Oracle, and mobile devices such as Pocket PC and point-of-sale terminals. Along with log shipping, database mirroring, and clustering, replication provides functionalities that satisfy customers' needs in load balancing, high availability, and scaling.

In this chapter, we introduce you to the concept of replication, how to implement basic snapshot replication, and things to pay attention to when setting up transactional and merge replication. We also go over the newly introduced peer-to-peer replication in SQL Server 2005. Along the way, we go over some best practices.