Replication, which is provided as an integral element of Microsoft SQL Server 6.0, allows you to automatically distribute read-only copies of transactional data from a single source server to one or more destination servers at one or more remote locations. Data can be replicated continuously or at specified intervals. It can be replicated in its entirety or as filtered subsets. Each destination server can receive some or all of the replicated data. Any number of source and destination servers can exist in an enterprise, and servers can perform both source and destination roles.
With replication, you can keep multiple copies of a table up to date, keep multiple databases closely synchronized, intermittently update data on multiple databases, and resynchronize data following a system outage or failure.
Here are a few of the many ways you might use replication:
You can easily configure, manage, and monitor replication using the new SQL Enterprise Manager enterprise administration tool, which offers convenient, centralized server management via a graphical interface.
The chapters in this part present the information you'll need to establish and maintain data replication between the servers of your enterprise.
Chapter 13, Replication Concepts, introduces SQL Server 6.0 replication. This chapter describes what replication is and what it can do for you, discusses the elements that make up replication, and describes how replication works. It also provides a replication glossary that defines many replication-related terms.
Chapter 14, Setting Up Replication, explains how to set up replication between servers. This chapter tells you what information to gather and what prerequisites to satisfy before setting up replication; how to set up servers, databases, and tables to send and receive replicated data; and how to stop replication. Also provided are a number of replication setup examples.
Chapter 15, Advanced Replication, explains how to monitor and maintain replication and how to recover from replication error conditions. It shows you how to set up several advanced replication examples. The tables, stored procedures, and scripts used by replication are discussed. Also, it describes how to set up replication manually, without the use of SQL Enterprise Manager.