Keeping data consistent across multiple offices is absolutely vital to any business, but it is made much more difficult when your offices are on opposite sides of the world. Having a single, centralized database is obviously ideal from a maintenance standpoint, but is impractical if it takes tens of seconds to perform even the simplest tasks from across the pond; sometimes, you can only be as productive as network latency allows. Having a separate database for each regional office solves the latency issue, but brings on the nightmare of worrying about synchronizing the data you have scattered about.
Enter SQL Server Replication.
SQL Server Replication offers a way to solve both of these problems. Set up a master "Publication" database at your main site, and a "Subscription" database at each of your satellite offices, and SQL Server takes care of the rest. No matter where your users are, changes made at one office will automatically be replicated to the rest. Now, you have the benefit of fast, local access, as well as managed data synchronization. We use this technology at RoviSys to further streamline our business process and tackle some of our multi-office challenges.
Stay tuned for a follow-up post covering some of the technical challenges we encountered setting up SQL Server Replication.
Also coming soon is an upcoming series on some of the other Multi-Office Challenges we've faced, and how GrandView has helped us overcome them!
Mark Carpenter
GrandView Business Solutions Developer