replication question

My situation:
I have a DB hosted by a 3rd party ISP. I want to replicate that DB locally
with in my office on our local server, mainly for backup purposes. I then
want to replicate that backup DB to a development DB for testing purposes.
Basically I'll have a LIVE DB hosted at the ISP. A backup version of the
LIVE
DB on our local server (peace of mind really) Then a development DB for
testing
purposes.
The Publisher will be the DB at the ISP.
Question 1. Is this a doable or a reasonable solution. I figured
transaction replication
from LIVE to BACKUP. Then Snapshot from BACKUP to
DEVELOPMENT.
It isn't absolutely necessary to have the most recent
data on the development db
since I will only be using it for testing purposes. But
would be nice to draw from
real data, almost live situations.
Question 2. Can a DB or server be both a Publisher and a Subscriber in this
case the BACKUP DB
would be both?
Thanks,
George
George,
this is possible - it is known as republishing. In your case my preference
would be to use merge between the live system and the Backup system, as it
is ideal for this sort of high latency situation. This would allow you to
have the Backup system as the publisher (with merge, the
publisher/subscriber metaphor doesn't especially hold), as you can then
control the configuration settings locally, and I'd have the live system as
a push subscriber. The other system is used as a testing system and the data
could become incompatible with replication from the Backup system, so I
wouldn't use replication to transfer to this box. Instead, I'd use a backup
and restore of the whole database - Backup to Test.
HTH,
Paul Ibison
|||I'd use transactional as
1) it offers better performance
2) it doesn't add a GUID key to every table.
The con of transactional replication is that you need a PK on every table you wish to replicate, and with republishing transactional is more sensitive to schema changes. By more sensitive I mean you have to drop your publications and subscriptions, make c
hanges and re-build again.
Looking for a SQL Server replication book?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html
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