Select Publication Type
Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 provides these types of publications: snapshot, transactional, and merge. Each type provides different capabilities depending on your application, and different levels of ACID properties (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) of transactions and site autonomy.
For example, merge replication allows users to work and update data autonomously, although ACID properties are not assured. Instead, when servers are reconnected, all sites in the replication topology converge to the same data values.
Transactional replication maintains transactional consistency, but Subscriber sites are not as autonomous as they are in merge replication because Publishers and Subscribers generally should be connected continuously for updates to be propagated to Subscribers.
Snapshot replication distributes data exactly as it appears at a specific moment in time and does not monitor for updates to the data. Snapshot replication is best used as a method for replicating data that changes infrequently, or where the most up-to-date values (low latency) are not a requirement. When synchronization occurs, the entire snapshot is generated and sent to Subscribers.
It is possible for the same application to use multiple replication types and options. Some of the data in the application may not require any updates at Subscribers, some sets of data may require updates infrequently, with updates made at only one or a few servers, while other sets of data may need to be updated daily at multiple servers.
Which type of replication you choose for your application depends on your requirements based on distributed data factors, whether or not data will need to be updated at the Subscriber, your replication environment, and the needs and requirements of the data that will be replicated.
Note If you are running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Personal Edition, Transactional publication appears shaded. The license for the Personal Edition does not permit the creation of transactional publications. However, you can still subscribe to transactional publications. To create transactional publications at this server, SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition or SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition must be installed.