Sql Server replication over wan

Question

Im looking at developing a simple ecommerce platform and need to replicate product and customer data to the web host over the internet so the website can run disconnected. The two options i can think of at present are using enterprise messaging and database replication.

Im leaning towards database replication over enterprise messaging as enterprise messaging would require additional developer resource to write all the plumbing code. Anyone have any success using sql server one way replication over unreliable wan links through the internet?

Answer 1

Hi,

In the last company I worked for we had full merge replication for some of our customers.

There were 2 scenarios

1. Merge Replication for hanadheld devices Some of our customers had PDAs and they subscribed to some published tables of our main database. They were disconnected for large periods and merge replication worked fine and updated changes on both sides when the connection was restored

2. Full site to site Merge Replications This was used for customers that had remote offices but required a fully synchronized local database for performance reasons. In most cases the VPN was extremely poor and we did have some instances of the VPN being down for a week and on restoration replication synchronized both database without an issue. In both cases replication seems to be very fault tolerant and performed very well.

In your case its one way replication so there should not be no merge conflicts to deal with making the situation easier.

There is a learning curve with replication but as a technology it works very well I found even over poor connections.

Liam