Pro SQL Server 2008 Replication Book Review

This is one thorough reference. It begins with an introduction to distributed data, distributed data transactions, eager replication, lazy replication, replication in SQL server, and the benefits of replication. The book then covers replication basics including the published-subscriber model, the different components of replication, physical replication models, and installing and configuring replication. Next is a detailed chapter on the types of replication, which include snapshot replication, transactional replication, and merge replication. Then there are several chapters on configuring snapshot generation, transactional replication, and merge replication. Each is covered with a chapter on configuring with a GUI, configuring using T – SQL, and the internals of each type of replication. Merge replication also includes a chapter on web synchronization with merge replication. After that backup and recovery, and optimizing, are covered for each type of replication. The book ends with a chapter on heterogeneous replication and how to connect with oracle to do replication. There are a ton of screenshots and a lot of code. This allows you to read the book without having a computer nearby to look at the examples in full. The book also contains a lot of tables which give great snapshots of the different parts involved with replication. There is a code download. The download includes text files for each chapter which contains the code samples for that chapter. The book is very well organized and has a very logical flow to it. The author also has a good writing style which makes reading a book on merge replication, which usually would not be too pleasant, a very enjoyable read. All in all I do not think there is a more comprehensive resource for information on how to accomplish replication in a real-world production environment. I highly recommend this book to anyone involved with replication in SQL server 2008.