Question:
I have nine offices. I want each office to connect across aWAN and run client/server applications with all datacontained on one central server. However, we are finding the delays are unacceptable. My suppliers have suggested that I purchase nine servers(one for each office) and use data replication to replicateeach office’s database back to the central site for consolidation. What are the pros and cons of thissolution?

Answer:
Replication may be a good alternative if you can segment your data such that the portion being actively used (inserts and updates) by any given local office is stored locally, and replicated primarily as reference (selects) in the other sites. The most common example of this type of data segmentation (vertical segmentation) would be where each local server is the primary storage point for all transactions directly involving that office; the transactions are replicated to the other servers for queries, reports, etc. Under these circumstances, you even can reasonably delay replication to the other sites without compromising your system (to accommodate periods of high usage, etc.)