Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible

Chapter 28

Replicating Data

In This Chapter

Understanding Replication Concepts

Configuring Replication

Replication is a native group of technologies in SQL Server 2012 that you can use to copy and distribute database objects and data from one database to another. In addition, replication synchronizes the databases to maintain consistency.

You can use replication for many purposes, listed here in order from most popular to rarely used:

• Offloading reporting from an OLTP server to a reporting server.
• Data consolidation; for example, consolidating branch office data to a central server.
• Data distribution; for example, distributing data from a central server to a set of member servers to improve read performance.
• Disaster recovery — replication can be used to keep a DR (disaster recovery) server synchronized with the main server, and clients can be manually redirected to the DR with minimual interruption.
• Synchronizing data with a central server and a mobile sales force.
• Synchronizing data with handheld devices (such as PDAs and smartphones).

You can make replication processes highly scalable, which typically can synchronize data between servers or databases with acceptable latency. Latency reflects the lag of time between when data is sent (replicated) from the source server and received at the destination server.