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To date, SL has not supported Replication. Has that changed in version 7? or in the Feature Pack for 7? Any issues with installing in a Cluster? SQL 2008 is now supported - has anyone installed SL in a SQL 2008 environment? Any words of wisdom?
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One of our partners developed this process for us and we are in the final stages of testing it - so I can't 100% vouch for it yet. Also I can only be vague (and for that I apologize but I didn't set this process up.)
We have the publication from PROD set up to refresh nightly (when everyone is out of the system), then, at will, we run the subscription into our TEST area. It takes about 2.5 to 3 hours with our 125GB APP db. There are a few gotchas along the way.1. This solution does NOT include the SYS db.
2. Replication locks the source TABLES from most schema changes after it is implemented.3. The Identity fields of all of the destination TABLES have to be "addressed". They cause problems b/c the process TRUNCATES existing TEST TABLES then adds the PROD data. Obviously the Indentity columns in TEST are not in sync w/ PROD TABLES. We were thinking about going with a DROP and CREATE model, but you loose INDEXES, TRIGGERS, STATISTICS, etc that way.
4. Of course, it's not supported by Microsoft.
It is doubtful that replication will be supported any time soon. The reason for this is that each application screen uses local buffer classes (SDO or Solomon Data Object in version 7, DH in previous versions) that have the same structure as the database table being accessed. These are compiled into the screen executable. If there is any change in the structure of a table, screen executables that refer to that table will break and refuse to open with an error message about a mismatch between the application buffer size and the database. To change the way this works would require a complete rewrite of the kernel and every screen.
SQL Server replication adds fields to each table, thus making it unavailable as an option for SL.
One potential option that I have not yet tested is database mirroring. In theory it should work but it is not 'officially' supported by MBS the last time I checked.
My best solution to achieve redundancy has been to script a nightly database backup and restore job to a warm spare server. Or you could use transaction log shipping.
I don't have any experience using SL in a clustered environment, but the added complexity makes me wary of it.
HTH,
Paul Phillips
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