Merge OR Transactional replication?

  • Hi all,

    I'm confused in choosing the appropriate replication type (Transactional or Merge).

    My Requirements:

    1) 1 Publisher and 1 Updatable Subscriber (I can maintain the range with my own logic so that there wont be any conflict while adding an entry)

    2) When an article is modified in Publisher, the change should be reflected to the Subscriber instantly and vice versa.

    3) If conflicts occur because of editing the same rows, the last modified article should win the conflict. Is it possible to configure this globally for all articles without adding TIMESTAMP column to every article?

    I went through some of the replication documents, but I have a doubt whether to choose Merge Replication or Transactional replication with subscriber updatable.

    MS SQL replication experts, please advise.

    Thanks & Regards,

    Kumaran

  • 2) When an article is modified in Publisher, the change should be reflected to the Subscriber instantly and vice versa.

    This requirement suggests that transactional replication is what you are after, however this doesnt necessarily fulfill the need for conflict resolution. There is no conflict resolution for transactional replication below 2008.

    3) If conflicts occur because of editing the same rows, the last modified article should win the conflict. Is it possible to configure this globally for all articles without adding TIMESTAMP column to every article?

    You can accomplish this in a number of ways such as custom conflict resolvers etc. However there will be a need to choose which is most suitable.

    With all replication, there is always some "lag" for data changes to propogate. The question is how much is acceptable to you in your position? Merge can be configured to replicate once every 60 seconds.

    Merge is almost always the preferred option when data is to be updated at the subscriber. Potentially you could go with peer to peer or transactional with updateable subscriptions but its not my preferrence.

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