Chapter 36. Understated changes in SQL Server 2005 replication
This chapter aims to cover the following areas:
- Useful undocumented or partially documented replication behavior
- Using the more efficient methodologies available in SQL Server 2005 to replace older replication techniques
That means we’ll be covering some of the less obvious changes made to the replication engine between SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.
Our main source of replication information—Books Online (BOL)—has a dedicated section describing the new replication enhancements found in SQL Server 2005. This section mostly concentrates on the main areas of functionality, such as setting up merge-over-HTTPS, Oracle publishers, peer-to-peer transactional publishing, and so on. Over time, though, various other subtle changes have come to light as the DBA community has gained more experience using SQL Server 2005 replication. Some of these configuration changes are not described at all in BOL, and in certain cases they’ll result in different (and preferred!) replication behavior. In other cases, the details are listed in BOL, but it is only with experience that others and I have realized that the new functionality is intended as a replacement for a previous way of administering replication.
